The Imaginary Visitor

by Aimee Amodio | More from this Blogger

07 Mar 2008 01:46 PM

I did a little research on people with Alzheimer's disease experiencing hallucinations because of my grandmother. She is progressing from mild into moderate Alzheimer's disease and has been experiencing hallucinations from time to time. I remember her calling through the house, looking for her mother (who passed away in 1998). She told stories of a little white dog she saw running through our backyard (that no one else ever saw).

Lately, the hallucinations have been becoming more frequent.

Last week, she told my mother a story about a stranger coming to the door. According to my grandmother, the doorbell rang and a man in his fifties was there. He was looking for me, and said that her house was the last address he had for me.

Thank goodness my grandmother didn't let him into the house. (On Halloween, she was letting people walk into my parents' house with this excuse: "They had a baby, I thought you knew them.") She did, however, give out my parents' address and said he should go there to talk to them.

Several days later, no mysterious man has shown up at my parents' house in his quest to find me.

I'll admit -- I did wrack my brain trying to figure out who this mysterious visitor could be. I didn't come up with anything. Just about everybody who fits that vague description knows that I've moved to the Portland area and knows how to get in touch with me. I can't think of anyone who'd come to the door looking for me -- nearly a year after moving.

We've all concluded that the visit was a hallucination -- though my grandmother swears she wasn't dreaming. And it really won't help to fight her over it. Hallucinations are just a part of the disease (and the treatment -- some of the medications she's used for Alzheimer's list hallucinations as a side effect) that the family has to accept and learn to let go.

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Aimee is a fiction writer... dog lover... music lover...

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