My 3 favorite words to hear from my husband are not "I love you," but "You're right, dear." Here is a case where I don't like being right. Well, I was saying for 6 months mom needed hospice, and hospices I researched denied due to her being on meds, and then FINALLY THANKFULLY getting her one, and they say, oh, she should have/could have been admitted to hospice sooner. Here's the other one. I wrote a letter to her primary care and neurologist, detailing her behavior change since they saw her last May. Both doctors got her in this week and were dismayed by her "progress" which in Alz is deterioration, or progressing to the next stage. If not for the letter, than the appointments would have been in April 2008. Here's the rub: I've been knowing for years that Mom was told she was schizophrenic when she went to the psych hospital when I was 13, but Mom have always denied it, and Dad always covered for her. I've been saying for years she needed to be medicated to soothe her stress and personality changes. Today, the neurologist prescribed Zyprexa, which is a med for bi-polar and schizophrenia. I wonder if anyone had listened to me sooner if all of this could be avoided? Dad would never hear of it, it being therapy and meds. What if Mom had been medicated and had therapy for the last 40 years. Would she still be in this position of dying from cancer only to not know it because she has Alzheimer's? What if the Alz is not really Alz but is another manifestation of the schizophrenia? She is looking for lost babies, which I think represent the babies she lost in miscarriage. Was it easier for doctors to DX her with Alz because she's older than to take care of her with schizophrenia? I don't know how my mother maintained herself. She can carry on a phone coversation with me (still, thank God, but for 2 minutes or less) and all the while she is carrying on ANOTHER conversation with her invisibles, making comments to "them" on the side while talking to me. Am I just driving my own self crazy with questions that don't have answers or maybe this just doesn't matter who did or did not do what when and how and why she was diagnosed? I just made peace with my mother and myself, (my mother, my self) and now not only is she dying, but her mind is gone. Dad said she pointed to a picture of me and my husband of 20 years, who she saw this past summer. She said, "I know that's Lynnie, but who is that man in the picture with her?" Well, any insight, or information from anyone who has been through this would be much appreciated. I always spent a lot of time on my mom, thinking about how what I might do or say would affect her, loving her, then being mad at her, we had intense relationships even during estrangements! but I never predicted that her last years or months would be this intense. Lady jane, how do families know when they are ready to move the patient from in-home to a facility? Dad is at wit's end. He's vomitting from stress every night, and he has only half a stomach left due to removal due to ulcers. They have no income besides SS. I'm sad and depressed. Headache.