I just got off the phone with my mother. She called me, crying, and told me she could not take it any longer.
"He didn't sleep here last night and he hasn't been home all day. He must be with her, I don't understand why he is doing this to me..."
The man she is talking about is my father, who passed away on January 28, 2015.
I tried to get mother calm. I reminded her that she was there when father died and saw when he was given CPR and when he took his last breath.
"Yes", she confirmed
"I remember all that, but where are these strange thoughts coming from? Why am I thinking of this woman and there being something to do with your father?" We talked on about how they had been married for almost 65 years. How my father loved her very much, and she him from the beginning when they met until the end. How he never ever slept away from her during all those years, if he could help it.
Mother was calm again when we finished and was going to bed, because she was feeling very tired.
I can with absolute knowledge say, that if my father had had an affair and had moved out of the house we in the family would all know. Mine is not a family in which one is allowed to keep such things secret, not for very long and we all get involved in the end - always.
This has been going on for about six weeks, not constantly, but from time to time. At first we - my older sister and I - didn't understand what the hell was going on and we put it down to grief. After a while we were told that hallucinations and a change of mental status sometimes can be the only visible symptoms of a urinary tract infection (UTI) in elderly people.
Last Friday I took my mother to the doctor for a checkup. The checkup showed no signs of a UTI so that wasn't the cause of the strange thoughts. What was discovered through a blood count test was that my mother had acute anemia. Her hemoglobin count was only 72 g/L (normal (121 to 151 g/L). The doctor believed that this could - possibly - account for mother's strange thoughts and hallucinations.
Mother was immediately admitted to hospital, with many protests and the promise it would only be overnight, and was given three bags of blood.
The reason for the anemia still remains unclear and is going to be investigated without hospitalization, as that is the only way my mother will accept.
It would seem that the blood transfusions haven't helped, not yet anyway. The whole thing makes me very sad and unhappy.
