Am I Losing My Mind?

My mother is now in a nursing home with a diagnosis of dementia. It took a while to finalise that diagnosis, and her journey included several different diagnoses and six ECT procedures.

I believe that Mum has psychotic depression as it was sudden onset - she woke up one day saying she didn’t know who she was, and she had been on long term medication for anxiety.

Her psychotic symptoms were immediate. Capgras syndrome, punishment delusions, belief that God was talking directly to her brain, belief that she had an agreement with the devil and that she was in purgatory, and worst of all the deepest fear of leaving her bed and the inability to express why. Furthermore, she refused all food and medication during the first couple of months, only drinking a daily thick shake, and was literally saved from passing via those ECT procedures, which were showing great initial success but stopped before the course was completed due to inverted T waves. (Heart)

Please note, the inverted T waves aren’t unusual in ECT, plus Mum had gone critical for low potassium the night before ECT commenced.

So to today. Mum is in a dementia ward and has an extensive list of medication. The medication regime for dementia and psychotic depression overlaps so aspects of her daily meds would be identical. However, the medical world has now ended any further investigations, whilst I have a mother who has trapped herself in a bed, and is nothing like other residents in her unit at the nursing home.

The greatest frustration is that her fears are so profound that she will completely shut down when talking to medical staff, but becomes herself when conversing with me. I have recorded those conversations as evidence of how her fears impact assessments of her, but to no avail.

Am I going mad? Or am I just refusing to accept a diagnosis that I should accept? Mum is in a far better mental state now than when the issues started as many of the psychotic issues have diminished. However, her physical deterioration from staying in bed is going to be irreversible soon.