Are Hallucinations In The Elderly Made Up Of The Garbled Stuff Of Memory Or Just Imaginings...

[sandyRoe]

...with no base in reality?

[naomi24]

A bit of each.

[Old_Geezer]

What's plaguing you Sandy ?
You can tell us.

[bednobs]

is it hallucinations (seeing things thst aren't there) or illusions (misinterpreting things that are there)?

[sandyRoe]

A forthcoming anniversary prompted a memory of an old woman in a hospital ward who was soon to be moved to a hospice. She was distressed and said she wanted to go home because visitors were bringing a little girl with them to see an old man in the same room and he was putting his hand up the child's skirt.
I had an uneasy feeling she might have been describing something in her own experience.

[Old_Geezer]

Ah, or maybe ghostly echoes of the room's past ;-)

[Retrochic]

Sandyroe, it could have been suppressed memories coming back -she may have been the little girl....

[wired]

On the last two occasions that my elderly father has been in hospital he has had many hallucinations, they usually have the same theme but are very different, the theme is that there are secret cameras in the wards, a stow away and a celebration dinner. They are very real to him at the time and it takes a lot of persuading to allay his fears then later he thinks I've made it all up.As far as I can see there is little or no facts in his imaginings.

[wolf63]

Is this old lady still alive ? If so maybe general conversation may elicit some sort of reply that would clarify the situation - but it is unlikely if she has dementia.

If the lady is dead you are never going to find out. It may be that something did happen in her childhood but it may have been all mixed up with things that she has seen and encountered through her life.

I went through a bad phase of hallucinations a couple of years back. My psychologist explained it all to me in a way that made it sound less frightening. Alas whatever she said to me has evaporated through my ears.

Our brains are fantastic things - but when they break down it all gets a bit scary and bewildering.

[sandyRoe]

Wolf63, she's long gone. A question here in AB about the subconscious this morning caused this to pop up from mine. Funny how the mind works.

[wolf63]

True - but where did my brain conjure up a hallucination of a headless horseman? I was only convinced that it wasn't real when my dog didn't react to it passing by.

[Old_Geezer]

Oh he'd seen it all before wolf.

[Peter Pedant]

Bit of both

when I had a psychotic episode in hospital ( I was in hospital first ) they insisted on describing/discussing the content of my hallucinations because they were based on my experiences

I said: if you stop the morphine infusion I will stop thinking I am dead...
[ Full of book of the Dead and Osiris, and as you know I have worked on an Egyptian arccheological site....Oh and I also had snakes crawling over me crossed with the baldacchino in St Peter's Rome which looks like columns with snakes crawling up ]

and they said yeah we have done that - but we still have to discuss what you were thinking and feeling -and I said 'why, this is a complete waste of time - they are well - you know hallucinations....

and they said no it isnt actually and anyway you are the maddest post surgical patient we have ever seen, and the end results are much better if you see someone now ( and it is true - I can talk about it without difficulty )

and here we are fifteen years later, where I can tell you where hallucinations come from....
and for further operations I have been careful to hold onto my marbles - - ( and take less morphine )

[Peter Pedant]

Yeah hahaha
My poor dear mother was in for a hip
pointed at the dear orthopaedic surgeon and said:

" He is a CIA agent and he is trying to kill me ! "

and how we laughed about surgeons doing in their patients - this was in the days before Shipman

[Peter Pedant]

// True - but where did my brain conjure up a hallucination of a headless horseman? //

at a punt ( guesso ) four horsemen of the apocalypse crossed with the horses head scene from Godfather....

which one didnt have the head ?

[wolf63]

PP - is there anything that you haven't done in your life?

Your post made me laugh - thanks, I needed to cheer up a bit.

[sandyRoe]

Didn't Johnny Depp star in a film featuring a headless horseman? Admittedly, not quite a headless horse, but close.

[sandyRoe]

1999 film, Sleepy Hollow.

[Peter Pedant]

sorry -- got confused between horse and horseman
there are a lot of both ( usually with heads ) here in Manch

Pleased to amuse Wolf on this wet and drab dat. rainy in M - I get flash-backs, especially under stress which really do frighten the crip out of me....

[Retrochic]

peter -you would deffo be on my 'fantasy dinner party' guest list xxx

[sandyRoe]

I hope the meat for dinner isn't sourced in any of these places.

http://www.londonlovesbusiness.com/lifestyle/london-restaurants/-where-to-eat-and-buy-horsemeat-in-london/4840.article