My Mom just finished treatment for vascular insufficiency prior to the virus shutdown. It definitely improved her memory, so for sure her dementia issues were at least partially due to vascular dementia. I moved her in with my family because she could not shake some standing/sitting habits that were making her legs swell up every day (and during shutdown there were no activities at her senior living). She is sleeping on the bed in my home office. Every night for 7 nights straight, she has rearranged my office. For the first few days I asked her not to do it, but she claims that she didn't do it (so doesn't remember). I wondered if this compulsion was a side effect from her diuretic, but since being at my house we have been able to end the medication. She only rearranges things at night. Is this a symptom of Alzheimer's? Or is this still the vascular dementia? Her insistence that she did not do the rearranging (which is quite a bit of work!) is so odd...
I am sure others with more experience will be on to give you more answers.
However, does it matter whether it's Alzheimer's or VaD because they both causes the person to do abnormal and crazy things and it just gets worst as time goes on. As the caregivers say here "her brain is broken!"
Good luck! Hugs!!
What exactly was given or done to your mom?
What medication did you end? This is very interesting.
About her nocturnal habits. You know she is moving the furniture. If it won’t hurt her or the furniture I would leave her in peace about it. She’s contained and it possibly enables her to sleep better.
I have a family member who would do this anytime left alone. She would just decide to start rearranging. Sometimes the design was better than others. Very annoying. And one would think the task would be too difficult for one person.
Anything that interferes with the brain functioning is going to result in unusual if not abnormal behavior. She appears to have a compulsion to move furniture. Some of us have a compulsion to shop, gamble, eat, drink, work, know, exercise ..., any number of things. With dementia most behaviors stop and something else starts up. In the demented it might be wandering, repeating questions, picking their skin, calling out things like “help me”, rocking ...the list goes on. Moving furniture doesn’t sound so bad to me but do keep an eye out for other new behaviors.
My aunt, 93 with dementia, has started going through a roll of toilet paper a day. Right when it’s hard to find....and she wears depends and doesn’t go to the bathroom that often on her own. Baffling.
So it's not uncommon, and just another befuddling behavior of the disease. Although this is an insidious disease, I look back and laugh at some of the behavior I observed.