Q. My 70-year-old aunt, who I am very close with, has had a rapid decline in the last few months. She started losing her memory pretty quickly over the past few months and began slurring her speech. The strangest symptoms are her hallucinations and extreme
paranoia. She’s also had one episode that appeared to be a seizure of some sort. She’s had a CT scan, an MRI, and a PET scan which show no evidence of her having had a stroke or having a brain tumor or aneurysm or any other type of brain injury. She is not a heavy drinker. I’ve spent a lot of time with her, and she only drinks one or occasionally two glasses of wine with dinner. She has no history of mental health problems, and her personality was nothing like this before. She’s also been
experiencing involuntary movements and problems walking, but the hospital did a DaTscan that they say mostly rules out Parkinson’s disease, and based on all of the brain scans and other tests, and the fact that all of these symptoms came on so quickly, the doctors do not think it is anything related to Parkinson’s nor do they think it is any type of frontotemporal dementia, although there have been very differing opinions among the many specialists she has seen. One diagnosis from one of the
neurologists she’s seen sounds feasible to me from what I’ve read. Have you ever heard of autoimmune encephalitis in seniors? From what I’ve read, it could be treatable if caught early. Her doctor is in the process of scheduling a brain biopsy, which sounds scary but is apparently the main way to diagnose autoimmune encephalitis to see if that is what she has.
How can we plan for her future long-term care needs if she doesn’t get better, if it wasn’t caught early enough, or if it actually is a form of dementia or Parkinson’s? Thanks for your help!
