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On Friday, Barb The Home Care Nurse (she takes care of both Mother AND me at this point) called me from Mom and Dad's house to let me know that Mom was running a fever of 101.6. Their doctor's office was closed for the day (which is a whole 'NOTHER issue, that may or may not be expanded upon later), and Mother was so weak that she probably could
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While Mom was still alive, she kept Dad focused, so none of us really know how bad he was. It was a real shock the first time I saw Dad really mess up in a serious cognitive malfunction.
Mom and Dad were planning going on a coach tour for senior's to Nashville. They were looking at maps of Canada and the States, going over the route the tour would take. It was then when Dad insisted that he had been to Tennessee before when he had been a chauffeur during his mandatory military service as a young man in Hungary. He was adamant that he had driven military Brass to meetings down 'south. Adamant to the point of getting angry when we tried to explain that that was not possible. (Well, he had been a driver, but that was Eastern Europe, well after WWII.)
It wasn't until I asked him how he drove across the Atlantic that he stopped and realized what he had said. This would have been funny if not for the implications of the faux pas.
But you are right that denial is not necessarily dementia. Thing is, there are fairly simple psych tests that can determine if one is having cognitive problems, but I suppose at this point, a geriatric assessment would be right out of the question, and probably not necessary.
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