My 85yo mother’s dementia has progressed significantly but she can still make enough sense to fool you as long as you don’t talk long. After that she repeats the same questions asks off the wall questions forgets 2 minutes ago all the way to 30 plus years ago. She cries and begs to go to the dr and when we get there she smiles and says she’s fine. When they leave the room she will ask me where are we and why are we here? She has pulled some of her hair out and has developed a constant “tick” of picking and rubbing her face and head. I feel like the doctor thinks I’m exaggerating but it is so much worse than they know. What should I do?
"please make sure the Doctor reads this, and, enters it into her chart; it is important information I was Unable to tell them in the very short office visits allotted."
That really helped stop a problem before it got started.
Your mileage may vary, depending on how clearly you describe her changes, and whether to Doc actually reads it before seeing your Mom for appointment.
The Doc my mom saw, NEARLY was conned by mom's teen-like flirting while asking for serious pain drugs.
But instead, he at least had scanned over it before the appointment--so when Mom started laying it on thick, the Doc excused himself to "check something in the other room"--and I watched him take more time to really read it...when he returned to the exam room, he explained he'd write a prescription for her for a "very powerful pain med". Mom bought it hook, line, and sinker. She was fairly giddy for having pulled her con. But...that was blown to bits once in the car, when she asked if I knew that drug? I read the RX, which was some other name for basically, a strong version of something like ibuprofen. When Mom demanded answer, it was best to tell her...when she learned the Doc had busted her con, she went from sweet, flirty, to instant Rage. Threw down the wadded-up RX, carrying on lividly, bad-mouthing drugs, docs these days, and sliding into everything else in life that had been bad, becoming a veritable Niagara of horrible temper, pain, and sadness.
She later retrieved the wadded-up RX and hid it in her wallet. She still had it a few years later, "just in case" [despite her being a former nurse, she never questioned that it would be outdated by then, so not usable].
Mom was a supreme "showtimer"; skilled at using about every trick in the book to survive; she retained that skill long after need of it. She sat with social workers fro your County for TWO hours....but every approx. half hour, she took a powder to her room for about 10 to 15 minutes, returning to the assessment ready to handle another segment of showtiming. Rinse/repeat that for 2 hours. The social workers NEVER saw through that; they only saw her deliberate construct that appeared a level of normal. Yet I knew, and had a hard time getting the doc. workers to hear me. So none of them wold document anything I told them verbally.
But that Doc who went aside to read my letter to them for her chart...he listened, and acted right; if he had not read that letter, he would have never understood that Mom was off-and-on suicidal, mentally and emotionally harmed and hurting her whole life, and had misused prescription drugs, and more...and he would have missed that to the potential endangerment of Mom, since her MO has been to collect pills and take them with alcohol as much as she can get ahold of.
I know that patient records are mostly digital now.
I think they still all have to keep a paper chart, of some kind, and scan it to digital. But something in writing that is formally entered into her chart, can also be digitized into her chart. And in-writing is more meaningful legally.
And it gets noticed--especially when you make sure you are heard when asking them to put it into her chart upon signing in, and repeated to the one who guides you back to see the Doc on the way into the exam room.
And keep a copy of it, labeled with the time/date you requested it be put in her chart. By doing that, it is due-diligence for someone doing elder care, even if from a distance.