Possible Early Signs in Relative (F, 65+) - Long Post
I've never posted here before, I'm not sure if this is appropriate or not for the sub so apologies in advance.
There's a female relative that I have who I think might be starting to show some early signs of dementia. She's over 65 with no family history of these conditions (that we know of, there aren't many people in her family who have reached 65+ to get a history ON, unfortunately). But I've known her all my life and things are different.
There are two major things that are going on with her that are concerning. The first is that she has increasingly dramatic mood swings. She can come through the door smiling, she might see or hear one thing that annoys her/frustrates her/worries her/just anything she doesn't like and she snaps. She gets aggressive, she throws things, she slams things, she shrieks, it's like a personality flipping on a dime. She's always kind of had a dramatic streak, but this is much different than her just yelling about whatever's bothering her. And it's happening more and more frequently.
The other thing that's going on is that she's convinced the person she lives with is working against her. She lives with a younger (adult) family member and she's thought for a while that this person is stealing, lying, moving her things around. Obviously outside of the house can't monitor 24/7, but... They're not. They've been trying to move out and off for a long time, but they haven't been able to. Mix of finances and emotional ties, pretty much.
(She has actually asked them to do banking for her in the past, make cash deposits, check accounts... Which the younger relative has completely refused to do, for obvious reasons. When this happens, she gets frustrated with them for not doing her a favor.)
There are also some problems with her memory that are a little lesser? She'll remember events and things that happened, but she can't remember when they happened. For example, she'll remember that she did something significant but she thinks it's before a certain date, not after it like when it really was. When she's corrected, she'll double down. She's told us before to stop lying to her when we aren't.
There was also a period of time when she was miscounting money. She handles cash for her personal finances quite a bit, and I remember one time she said she was missing something like... 44 $5 bills. Not that she was missing $220, that she was missing forty four five-dollar-bills exactly in that way. We brought up suggestions, like that she counted something twice or maybe forgot she made a deposit previously, but she never agrees with that logic. She always defaults to someone stealing from her. If not the younger relative, then the bank tellers or even the bank itself.
When she's calm (which is a lot of the time, to be far) and you can talk to her, she does actually remark that she's worried about dementia. She says she forgets things often, and she says she 'gets--'... And then mimes a very overwhelmed, kind of 'crazy face? ...and we've just brushed it to the side to kind of placate her and the situation, but things are getting so chaotic that we're starting to look at each other like something might actually be going on here.
I want to stress that, right now, she's pretty independent. She drives, she works, and she does well at both of those things (although she does also think people at work collaborate/conspire to put her down- she thinks people are sabotaging her so she earns less money). The biggest problem that we've got here is that she will not go to the doctor. We cannot convince her go to the doctor, we have tried many times for many different reasons.
So I don't know how we even begin to address this situation if it ends up developing into something much more serious. I am VERY worried about the one who lives with her, and the pets in the house, because if something does happen they'll be the ones to have to deal with it. And no one really knows where to start. We're worried she'll be driving and she'll get into an accident, or she'll progressively get more aggressive, and we don't know what that looks like.
I have so many questions, but the two biggest ones are: 1. If anyone is willing to share, what did the first few symptoms look like for afflicted relatives, and how long did it take before someone had to step in? 2. How did you step in? Particularly if you're dealing with someone who has the agency to not seek help? Is it an Adult Protective Services call, is it a 911 call, what does that look like?
Thank you to all who can give some advice.