My mom has vascular dementia, possibly Lewy Bodies. She keeps having hallucinations of my father (passed three years now) visiting her and confronting her with things she obviously has had deeply hidden guilt about. He was not my bio dad, but only dad I knew. He had 4 children from a previous marriage when my mom and he met- ages 2, 4, 6 and 8. Though I know he paid child support he never saw them again. She thinks he is angry with her and blaming her for not ever seeing them again, saying things like "your dad keeps telling me if I didn't dress so nicely at work he wouldn't have fallen in love with me and he wouldn't have lost all of his kids". I don't know the timeline- there have been many secrets in my family- one of which was that he was my bio dad until I was 26- my brother who was dying spilled the beans. I'm 43 now and we never talked about it again after that was brought out. I had a fake birth certificate, etc to put me younger so it looked like I was my dad's until then. Is it normal for dementia to torture someone like this? It's breaking my heart for her. She's a woman of faith and I know has asked forgiveness for many things in her life- and she doesn't think he is a hallucination, she thinks he is haunting her and she is afraid to die because she thinks he will be angry when she meets him in heaven. The nursing home does not have memory care where we live so they don't seem to know how to help her very much. She gets another psych eval Wednesday but she hates telling "strangers" about her hallucinations as she is still herself and gets embarrassed by all of this. Experience? Help? Thoughts?
There are a couple of folks here whose loved ones had LBD. I hope one of them will be along with some suggestions.