Meanwhile, I’ve work my ass off for what we have.
Often with Parkinson's, the patient will deny their oppressive symptoms. For example, at the last Thanksgiving I spent with my mom, she repeatedly complained someone had hidden sand in her clothing (combined with Parkinson's being a movement disorder, she was weak, so moving was difficult. Don't mistake it as a joke, she was serious).
On the Saturday after, I was traveling with my brother when she called to see if we had things arranged for Thanksgiving (my immediate family has long been the host of a larger gathering of extended family, so it was on her mind, even though the day had passed and she was essentially bedridden in a facility).
With dementia, there's confusion mixed in, but when it's a delusion in the medical sense, there's not really much sense in trying to argue with it, because it's a literal concrete belief.
Before we moved her into the facility, there were times when she wouldn't eat because she was fretting about her grandchildren that had been turned into squirrels (why would you eat when that is going on).
My very first experience with her irregular thinking was arriving at her home in the morning and having her express relief that I could hear her, as the people she had been hallucinating visually all night were not saying anything she could hear. That was about 3.5 years before she died in hospice and a few months before a full blown psychotic episode.
Following the psychotic episode she had a stay in a psychiatric hospital and was discharged on Zyprexa, which was sedating and really dulled her personality. After changing over to Nuplazid, she had a good number of months of clear thinking, like the clock had been wound back to before any problems started, but it got to where she decided that the pills were the cause of her problems, culminating in another stay in the psychiatric hospital and my family placing her in memory care.
Eventually in memory care she broke her femur (balance problems, falling a lot), requiring surgery to pin the bone back together. In her delusional state, she decided that the pain she felt following the surgery meant that she couldn't stand up anymore, and she was bedridden for the remainder of her life. Physically, she probably could have stood up a couple days after the surgery, but she didn't want to.
I suppose dementia is a small corner of delusional thinking overall, but there you go.
I was a caregiver for two delusional people. My mom unexpectedly developed post-anesthesia dementia for the 6 mos prior to her death. My ex developed a recurring psychosis during the last 15y of our marriage.
They were very different events. IDK if either is similar what you're considering.
During a longish period she stole my van. Some days later I received a call at 3am from someone 400mi away who found her walking along a very remote road. I asked him to call the local police and they got her to a MH ER center. In a week, the center had her stable enough to travel and put her on a bus back.
She could sometimes be reasoned with - sometimes surprisingly so. But it usually didn't stick for long. Some time later she'd back like we never talked.
That's sort of what our time was like. Anything useful?
edit: I had an aunt who was schizophrenic. She lived with us when I was young. She would vacillate between lucidity - and suddenly having conversations with people who weren't there - and then lucidity again, in tens of minutes.
My aunt would also disappear from her husband+kids. She'd turn up months later, usually in France.
This is interesting to me.
I have been close to a number of people who suffered profound delusions. Are you asserting that their mental absurdities were actually things that happened IRL?
If so, that's a pretty unique worldview.
I mean, I'm glad to hear about your family being safe but that's frankly not a huge stretch of the imagination? Collectively the chances of it all happening are very slim, but that could be said about everything that happens in specific enough terms. A once-persecuted family having a thriving family tree isn't a unique or even unlikely result from that scenario. It's a story of familial peril and triumph, but not really one of defying the odds.
To reiterate what the parent was saying - there are degrees of delusion that range from "serendipitous coincidence" to "actual hallucinations caused by taking drugs". At some point along the line, surely all sane people would agree that delusion loses it's basis in rational thought...?
Not yours of course, I’m sure the one you happened to be born into is the one true and right one. The other five thousand or so are the made up ones. Those fools spend their whole lives believing in something priests and hucksters made up long ago.