For years my family has tried to get to the bottom of "what is wrong with Grandma." It started in August 15 years ago. We had been busy getting ready for a garage sale--ironing, marking prices, etc. Everything was fine. The next morning (a thrusday) grandma got up and said she didn't feel well so she stayed in bed for much of the day. We thought she might be coming down with something, when asked, she just would say she didn't feel well--no elaboration.

That night, grandma woke me up around midnight and told me there was a little boy wearing a hat looking in her bedroom window. I didn't know what to think! I didn't see a thing. I told her he must be gone and we went back to bed.

In the morning, she got up and grandpa asked her to make some eggs. (Usual morning routine)she didn't know what eggs were or what to do with them. She laughed it off.

In a few minutes, I found her in the living room looking for something. I asked her what she was doing. She said she could only find one cat. I told her we only have one cat. She said she thought we had two more. Then she looked at me so oddly and asked how we were related.

I called my mom and she called our family doctor, he called a neurologist and took straight to her. They did a cat scan and she said "there seemed to be something" put she didn't know what. After that, we took her to another specialist and he just have her some xanx and sent her home.

She spent days and most of the nights pacing and crying, talking and totally out of it. She would "keen" like many cultures do when someone dies. It's the eeriest, bone chilling sound. I took to filling my ears with cotton balls--it helped a little. Before long she became very difficult to handle, she became afraid of water wouldn't go in the bathroom and would relieve herself on any rug she happened to be near. She saw Hitler in the fireplace, and one day she saw and felt (or thought she felt I never really knew) Satan burning her at a stake. My grandfather came home while it was happening and called our family doctor, the doctor didn't really know just what to do either so he told grandpa to try to get her in the car and meet him at the hospital. (She was very careful not to let grandpa see or hear what was going on--so he didn't fully know the extent of her illness--until that day.)

The doctor called it Alzheimer's, but admitted he didn't really know what kind of dementia it really was. He helped us get her into the local nursing home.

For about a month.The nursing home called and told us they couldn't handle her and we would have to take her home. By now she was violent ,as well as, delusional. She was certail the cat was sick and she had to get to help. So she was contantly cooking up ways to sneak out of the house with the cat. Three times I had to go outside in the middle of the night and try to get her back inside--once in a driving rainstorm. Once she made it to a neighbors house and actually got inside! These poor people had this wild eyed screaming woman in their kitchen trying to get them to take her to a vet with the cat in the middle of night. I'll never forget that night. One night she decided to put the cat "out of his misery" with Draino. I spent the night trying to hide the cat. (The cat was a young healthy normal cat)We took the cat in the car and drove around for awhile, came home and told grandma we took the cat to the vet and he was in perfect health. She was convinced the vet was wrong and we had to find another vet.

One day I came down stairs (I never really knew what I was going to be faced with.) Grandma was in the bathroom. She had washed up, put her hair in rollers, was wearing some makeup and seemed "right as rain." She was talking reasonable, helped make dinner. Could she recover again? Well, my hope was short-lived. The next day she was convinced she couldn't walk. This phase, while still bazaar, was one of her easier phases. Grandfather entered the hopital for bypass surgery. She was fine with that. She couldn't figure out how his voice was coming out of the phone when he was just "upstairs playing the organ."

She would have a day every 4 to 6 weeks that was, if not perfectly normal, it was very close. She would do her hair, dress herself, talk coherently and I hated these days because I knew there was no telling what wild phase she would be in. In one of her "phases" she was constantly "cleaning". Everything went. The desk and all grandpas important paper, all of her clothes, everything in the kitchen cabinets, old photos, anything and everything. In a way it might have make a certain kind of sense, but when I tried to explain to her that other family members needed these things and that some of it was priceless family treasures, she just couldn't seem to grasp it or didn't want to. She say "ok, I won't clean anymore. I'm going to take a nap." And as soon as I went into the other room I would hear her up and rummaging through things. These phases never lasted for more than 5 or six weeks. Finally, she was little more than a walking vegetable. And I talked grandpa into getting her into a nursing home in the next town that accepted demensia patients.

That was 15 years ago. She is in good physical shape for a 88 year old woman. She can't walk any longer, but her blood pressure is good, etc. She is given medication to keep her calm and for the hallucinations. She doesn't know me, she barely knows mom.

It was the strangest thing, when we went up to tell her grandpa died, she was sitting in the dayroom at a table talking to herself (she does this constantly) and mom walking up to and without even looking at her grandmas eyes cleared and she said in a perfectly lucid voice "He's gone, isn't he." and mom said "yes" and she sat there for a minute and then she seemed to forget it completely.

The nursing home doctor calls it Alzheimer's, I don't believe it for a minute. I don't believe it would come on that suddenly.This isn't the first time this has happened. She had whatever this is when she was in her 50's and slowly recovered. She had some lasting dizziness and her balance wasn't good. You don't get Alzheimer's, recover for the most part from it and then come down with it years later. The "phases" with a normal or near-normal day between them,hallucinations, fears, she wasn't so much incontinent as she was afaid to go into the bathroom or she couldn't figure out how to get from where she was to the bathroom (she only had to walk through one room) or she was afraid she couldn't find her way back or that I would forget how to get her back. There's so many things about it, it could easily fill a book. But we are still just as baffled and confused today as we were that fateful day it began.

Has anyone ever heard of this? Have you had a loved one that fits this discription? I know a lot of fits the symptoms of Alzheimer's, but my heart of hearts tells me it isn't. I don't know too much about this, but she had an aunt who must have come down with something like this, but she died soon after. Her father died of hardening of the arteries and he went threw something like this, but it didn't last long before he died. Her greatest fear was dying like her father. The dying is easy, it's the living that's hard.

Similar to Grandpa.The "in and out" was the strangest. Started with falling, slurred speech, hallucination. The answer: Dementia with Lewy Bodies. His sister had same problems, her doctors perscribed anti-depressant and zyprexa (anti- psychotic). We went for same treatment. For past year, Grandpa okay and functioning.

And, yes it is. When UNREGISTERED MORONS are given free reign to post their trash, it lets all of us know how shallow, stupid, moronic and uncaring they are.

In a perfect world, these MORONS would try to help this present crisis instead of hiding behind a pseudo-name, peddling junk pills that none of US are interested in, in the first place.

Hey Moron, why don't you consider using your computer skills for other purposes ... like trying to help humanity.

IDIOTS, THEY GROW EVERYWHERE, JUST LIKE WEEDS.

God, help us all.

Dear Kim,

How is your grandmother doing now? Any changes?

Kimberlyarae, welcome, has she ever had problems with Manic depression or things of that nature.For one to change over night seems very strange.Did anything happen that was so tramatic that it could have caused her to shut down this way.Certainly is very sad to hear this happened with out any warning.I hate when doctors are so quick to diagnois every mental problem as AD..Has she ever had a pet scan?It tells so much more that the other tests.How has her blood work been, nothing unusual.This happened to my mother as soon as she saw her brother in the casket.I would try a gheriatric doctor .

Alezheimer's is a strange disease for sure.No two days are alike,some are good others not.It turns a person into a maniac at times,mellow the next.Was she ever on any medication for the AD,at any time?I have seen many with AD act just as you described.It takes medication & lots of love,caring to survive,plus respite for the caregiver.