Quite often my mother will hear a story someone tells then about 24 hours later, tell everyone that is what happened to HER. She will be insistent and I believe that she believes it. For instance, she saw something on TV where a man told his wife, “I’m not going to put my life on hold for you.” A day later, she angrily confronted me for telling her “I won’t put my life on hold for you,” which I never said. I mentioned to her once that I was taken aback because my husband’s mother, who knows we are on a tight budget and have 3 children, had asked for a ruby for Christmas. A day later, she told everyone that my niece had asked her for a ruby for Christmas, which never happened. She was insistent, talked about it obsessively and was so offended. She did tell me once that she could not remember if she dreamed something or if it was real. Some of the outlandish stories she tells sound like dreams and I think sometimes she doesn’t know the difference. She has always suffered from mental illness but never done this before. Does this sound like dementia?
Yes, this is normal and part of the desease. My Mom's dreams, TV and reality were one and the same. One day while she was watching TV, she told me the doctor wanted to talk to me. The "Dr." was Dick Van Dyke and she was watching ""Diagnoses Murder". She would ask me if something happened, I said "no, u must have dreamt it". I had to stop allowing her to watch "Emergency". Every time there was a fire or an explosion she thought it was in my house.
So they make things up, mix things up and really think they're real and right, etc. They're not trying to lie, they just can't tell anymore.
I do think it is part of dementia.
Think, in fact, dreams. How different your dream life is from reality. How different the stories you read from your own. The TV dramas and movies. And then think of being able to separate your reality from those worlds. It is, in fact amazing. And as you are so good at writing, considering writing incidents as they happen in a journal.
I am not making light of this; living with it has to be VERY daunting, and, as a Dr. Mr. Sacks could move away from it by going home from his work. You cannot.
This does indeed sound like a form of dementia, esp. if there is no mental illness history. Lewy's is noted for hallucinations that are VERY REAL, seeing people, being able to describe them to the inth degree, and my bro, who has apparently early Lewy's by diagnosis, can have these and describe them perfectly. Such as "A pool party outside my window. One man with white shorts, no shirt, hair combed like Elvis, towel over his shoulders" or "An immigrant woman huddled, dressed all in brown draped clothing, huddled in the corner of my room sheltering a baby; I reach out to her and poof--gone". He understands they are not real, and this is disturbing to him. But they SEEM entirely real.