Vascular dementia early stages

I’d speak to your G.P. they would know .

One of my Uncles became very aggressive with Dementia, before he became ill he was the nicest quietest man you could ever wish to meet, it was so sad and very scary for his wife and family.
some years later his wife was also diagnosed but she was very quiet and calm.

it's v unsettling when someone whom we regard as a close friend/family suddenly slips into a ranting rage.
whatever the cause.
i think it is well attested that dementia can cause this.
also many other mental disorders.
knowing how to deal with it in the moment is tricky.
i guess if it is known to be due to some organic or progressive brain impairment, then one just has to stand back, disengage, until the hurricane passes. hopefully.
but what if it is unclear as to cause. how much is poor regulation of behaviour, i mean people just being verbally abusive, almost violent, to dominate.
is it always right to back down. or should they be held to account. after all, if might is right, if violent outbursts hold sway, we would have no recourse to law.
sorry gone off on a tangent.
have just now been faced with this, being raged at, almost threatened, yet again.
can't leave the location, not totally, as would adversely affect a third party, who is vulnerable.
in this situation the person has depression and PTSD, but no cognitive impairment.
i just don't know how to handle it.
first time, i was so shocked, now it's like a minefield, unpredictable explosions.
i said this is not acceptable, control yourself.
but saying anything at all increases the rage.
i don't know what to do.
this was is a friend, who has been v close, and mutually supportive, and i know about the PTSD, but it's like jekyll and hyde.

In my FiL the first signs were e.g. wearing grubby jumpers (very uncharacteristic), failing to shave, going repeatedly to the shop to buy the same thing, so that we’d find e.g. 8 identical packs of sausages in his fridge.
And putting things like tins of soup in the freezer.

We were completely new to it all then so took a while to realise that all these weren’t just his habitual stubbornness, but something else.

And the very first thing, which we only realised much later, was when he was all dressed up in a dinner jacket to go to his son’s very smart wedding, and just as we were leaving, said, ‘Where are we going again?’

My lovely step father had vascular dementia and he never became aggressive or insensitive Horti, it does affect everyone differently.

One of my neighbours has vascular dementia, she did have periods of being angry and inappropriate but now has gone back to being her sweet self although is more often living in the past.

All kinds of everything Horti.

My H has Alzheimer's and vascular dementia..always has had a sort of narcissistic personality ...has now also developed tinnitus which he cannot cope with at all..so he is looking for someone to blame...me of course...saying that I'm putting pills in his food..thus causing the tinnitus...absolutely awful and wearing me down...

Oh golly thanks for all your replies
I seriously think there’s something going on and upcoming tests may bring some clarity
It’s difficult to know if it is chosen behaviour ie aggressive /narcissstic or caused by some brain impairment
All I know is it’s getting worse and impacting my peace of mind
I can overlook it sometimes but not others when verbal abuse can be shocking
Difficult to decipher and decide the best path

My Dad (92) has vascular dementia, diagnosed about three years ago.
He'd previously cared for my Mum with Alzheimer's at home, 160 miles away from us.

When he first developed symptoms he knew something was wrong and he'd get quite angry and frustrated at this time. As he put it, "I just want to know what's going on inside my head."

An MRI scan confirmed the diagnosis, though no medication was appropriate.
He calmed down a lot once he knew and we gradually, tactfully, stepped in as and when he needed help. The trickiest thing was taking his car keys off him, but he'd been observed driving unsafely so we had to.

He had already moved to an extra-care apartment in our town after Mum died five years ago.
The care team have gradually stepped up the support he receives when they've identified a new decline.
They now manage his medication, meals, laundry, cleaning, shopping, they take him to appointments if I'm unable to.
At my request they encourage him to wear clean clothes every day. He still has a shower and shaves every day unaided.
I manage all his banking.

He goes to a great day centre four days a week where there is loads going on. The mental health nurse who carried out Dad's annual review last summer said it was important to try and get him out every day, mixing with other people.
Dad calls it "going to work"!

He's calm, he's happy, he has no worries, he's doing well so far... 🤞

farview it sounds as though you need some help and support, please don't soldier on alone.
Dad did that with Mum and it brought him to breaking point, hence the move after she died.

do please see a GP, as there are other issues that can mirror dementia but are easily treated with antibiotics. I know of at least 2 such cases but sorry, can't remember the illness/condition

Absolutely, yes! My Mum has vascular dementia and was really angry and paranoid…she is now on a cocktail of drugs, including anti-psychotics and her behaviour has been utterly transformed. You need to get a diagnosis first, which can be difficult if the OP doesn’t comply…. it took a lot of cajoling and a wonderful GP to finally get Mum to attend the assessment. Good luck!

Yes it can be.
Alzheimer's UK is a wealth of support and information on all types of dementia.
They also offer telephone support
www.alzheimers.org.uk/about-dementia/types-dementia/symptoms-vascular-dementia#:~:text=Changes%20in%20behaviour,embarrassing%20or%20difficult%20to%20understand.

V3ra. Are you based in England? I doubt it as the living arrangements for your father sound so good!
Along with other illnesses, it is so difficult to I’d the best care/support in England. Having experienced it with my mum, I wish everyone else coping the best of luck in 2024.

There was no internet to refer to when I first had to cope with FiL’s vascular dementia, but I did find a little book in the library.

One term that will be forever with me is the ‘catastrophic reaction’ mentioned in the book. I soon found out what that meant - a truly violent rage (over the tiniest thing) - so frightening I had to leave the house and take the petrified dog with me.

It was so utterly unlike my ‘normal’ FiL - I knew dh didn’t really believe me when I told him. TBH I probably wouldn’t have believed it, either.

However he did it again when dh was present. Dh is a big hefty bloke but even he said he wouldn’t have dared to approach him. It didn’t happen very often but was always over some minute thing over which I had no control anyway.

My husband has had encephalitis this year and his personality has definitely changed. He is impatient, irrationally bad tempered and shouts and swears at the tv and radio. He also rages when he struggles to complete a task. It’s difficult and he finds it hard to cope with.

My father had vascular dementia. He had been a volatile type of person all his life and could get very worked up and angry so at first it was difficult to spot. We noticed him struggling with words where previously he had been very talkative and excitable. His memory got worse. He got very frustrated and angry. His GP was pretty useless tbh and put his behaviour down to an exacerbating of his inherent character traits. The mental health nurse who we insisted assess him was very nice but couldn’t decide whether he had dementia or not, which was no help whatsoever! This was a long time ago and the Health service was perhaps not as aware of this condition as they are now-although they really should have been. To cut a very long story short, we eventually got a diagnosis and my mother got limited support at home as Dad refused to move into the specialist care home he needed. His GP would not diagnose him with limited capacity at that stage or refer him on. My mum had suffered a TIA earlier on so struggled to care for him, even with carers. My sister and I both lived a considerable distance away, but stayed with them as often as we could, both juggling jobs, our own illnesses and families. It was a horrific time. Eventually things came to a head when my father attacked the doctor when he made a rare home visit after months of begging. We had to get Dad sectioned as he could not be removed from his home otherwise. My mother was very reluctant to do this. We got him settled satisfactorily after a long struggle to find decent care. Sadly Mums health broke down shortly after and she had to be admitted to a care home herself. She died before him although we never told him as we knew he was too affected by his condition to understand properly. I do hope that dementia diagnosis and care is quicker, kinder and more effective now as what we suffered as a family was terribly painful and frustrating. My advice? No more than trust your own instincts and fight all the way for the best care for your loved one no matter what the ‘experts’ say!

I would suggest you contact Dementia UK, they train Admiral Nurses and you may have one in your area. She would be your support from day one and right through to the end. They support carers and "teach" them how to deal with our loved ones who live with Dementia regardless what type. There are so many different types of Dementia and everyone is affected differently so there is definitely not specific pathway. We tend to say VD is more steppy than Alzheimer's which is a gradual slope, but some Dementia are much more steep often depending on age too. Get a referral from the Admiral nurse or if you haven't got one insist your loved one's GP refer you to a Memory Clinic for assessment. If you have a Memory Cafe in your area join them too, they should be a wonderful support as should your carers link. Good luck.

parky642

do please see a GP, as there are other issues that can mirror dementia but are easily treated with antibiotics. I know of at least 2 such cases but sorry, can't remember the illness/condition

Untreated UTIs (Urinary Tract Infections) can mirror dementia. Is that what you were thinking of?

2020convert. There are three complexes with some extra care apartments in our relatively small town (Somerset), more seem to be added weekly. They have also been built in the large town (Wiltshire) we moved from ten years ago If it’s something you’re interested in worth googling for your area. Most that we’ve seen are part of a complex with ‘normal’ retirement apartments. The only downside for people needing extra support seems to be cost! We decided to move to a bungalow, no in-house support means both or one of us may need to move again in the future, with luck we won’t and will escape the debilitating disease that any type of dementia can be.

Well thats all good and fine but what if the person refuses point blank to go to the doctor ? You cant drag him along ...

When my mum was diagnosed with Alzheimers (over 10 years ago) I found tremendous support from this organisation (sorry, for some reason it won't show as a link you can click on, so you'll have to type it in)

forum.alzheimers.org.uk/

The saying goes "When you've seen one person with Alzheimers you've seen one person with Alzheimers" i.e. every single one is different.

My little mouse-like mum became angry, a nuisance to her friends (she lost all sense of time so would be phoning them in the night to see why they hadn't visited her), she was also found several times at the local bus stop at 3 a.m. (we don't get buses in the night in our rural area).

When she was admitted to the care home we had a fraught couple of months where she tried to escape, but once that was over she was actually fairly happy there. Medication calmed her down and I found her a more interesting person than I had experienced growing up. Often they revert back to their childhood or early life and it seems she had done quite a lot of interesting stuff that I hadn't been aware of.

Unfortunately she died of an unrelated medical emergency which at least saved me the distress of seeing her deteriorate further with AD.

Good luck to you, do the best you can, and accept it will not be perfect but there is no right and wrong way to "handle" this terrible disease.

Hi Horti, my husband was diagnosed with vascular dementia a couple of years ago and it’s a horrible disease. We had moved to Devon after looking after both sets of parents in their late stages of life and dying also step father. We lost 7 family members in 8 years and i especially needed to get away from everyone which was stupid on reflection but we moved to Devon and didn’t find the people we came across as particularly friendly plus COVID kicked in.
My husband started having what I thought was nightmares night after night waking me up, he’d push me out of bed, telling me the ceiling was flooding , get up and kick an imaginary football around the bedroom, this went on night after night. He also complained of head and neck pains (still does). Then one morning he got up and was very quiet so I asked him what was the matter and he told me something that had happened to us 42 years ago was my fault, he’d dreamt about it and realised I was to blame, he absolutely went mad. I told him it was 42 years ago and I wasn’t interested in dragging up the past and to grow up and he suddenly got up and started hitting me even though I’m physically disabled/ bone disease . He’d never hit me before in his life but that was it, I’ve unfortunately never felt the same about him! I visited the Doctor and asked for some sleeping pills for myself as I was exhausted and couldn’t sleep because he was waking me up nightly and I broke down that he’d hit me and I hated being on my own with him, it still didn’t occur to me it was dementia even though I’d had to section his Dad because he was violent to my MIL I just thought my husband was turning into a very nasty old man like his father. It was only by grabbing my phone during that particular nasty episode and putting my DS on speaker phone who told him to leave me alone that he stopped. My DS & DIL suddenly appeared at our door 2 days later (wasn’t supposed to visit due to COVID) and said to me that they had realised his behaviour was changing that I then broke down and said I couldn’t and wouldn’t cope with violence. Doctor sent hubby for a head scan on the pretence of head pain but we didn’t hear anymore. Long story short, I put house on market as son wanted us living nearer so we’ve moved 20 minutes away from them and as soon as we changed Doctor and I explained what had happened they sent him for a CT scan. They managed to compare his brain scans and diagnosed Vascular Dementia and because he actually believes his hallucinations they’ve put him on melatonin tablets at night which really help. I was torn after 43 years of marriage about staying with him, it was me that was in shock for a long long time as it’s like treading on eggshells, he can flare up so quickly and be so nasty which is out of character for him. He’s now under the mental health team and they’ve been brilliant but can’t do anything more until he gets worse. We’ve had to stop him driving as he came extremely close to having an accident which caused another tantrum which I let my son deal with because fortunately he takes more notice of him than me for some reason. The doctor and mental health team have told me if he gets violent I’m to call the police straight away and if he gets up at night not to wake him because he gets aggressive. I live day to day and try not to plan things because he’ll go on and on about it. My last dog past away last year and I wasn’t going to get another one then suddenly I got asked to foster a little girl, which we did and he’s absolutely fallen in love with her and she him! He takes her out for walks, feeds her etc but has got lost so I’ve put a tracker on her harness and because she’s very pretty People kept stopping him to stroke her which was annoying him so I’ve put a ‘reactive’ sleeve on her harness and they’ve left her and him alone more. It’s a horrible situation to be in and I completely understand, my first suggestion would be to get your Doctor to get your DH under the mental health team who can help with medication if he needs it and general advice etc. our doctors surgery have a member of the carers team on certain days who also give advice and help. My DH isn’t at the stage where he needs to go to day centre but he will be going when he’s at that stage so I can have a break. He’s had a couple of TIA’s we think. But on the whole it’s like looking after an overgrown stroppy child who you’re constantly watching and clearing up after. It makes me sad and depressed that this has happened but short of leaving him I’ve realised I just have to get on with it until I can’t anymore. It does frighten me especially sleeping with him which I hate doing but our 2nd bedroom is my craft room and I’m sad as he has no empathy for anyone but himself. It’s as if his feelings have been turned off. He’s completely self centred now which is unfamiliar for him. He doesn’t like me going out on my own and hates to be left but the dog helps that a bit even though I worry if I’m out he’ll accidentally leave the gate open. I won’t hesitate to have him sectioned if the need arises because of the aggression. I suggest you get your doctor to refer you to the mental health nurses who are fantastic as your first move. Happy New Year.

Suzieque66

Well thats all good and fine but what if the person refuses point blank to go to the doctor ? You cant drag him along ...

Dementia charities/helplines can guide you with this.
Although GPs can't discuss a patient they can discuss relatives' concerns and act on them.
Some GPs will call a patient in on a pretext to assess the situation, others may do a home visit or get a district nurse to call round to assess, this starts to get the ball rolling.
There are ways and means as this is an extremely common situation (someone with suspected dementia refusing to see a GP).