Markjango

Having had to do some research for the solicitors who are challenging our mums will, I came across some research which summed mum up to a tee. And I had never even ever heard of "confabulate" before, but it does seem this is what she was doing - filling the gaps in her memory from the damage caused by the SAH, with fantasy, which she believed to be real. In fact, she had all 3 side-effects mentioned. http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/123/10/2109.full

Thankyou for all your nice words. Tomorrow is her funeral, and I don't feel a thing. She lived 13 years after the SAH, but for me she died 13 years ago. I don't know if the SAH started off some other undiagnosed personality disorder which made her so wicked. She was definitely dellusional, and had classic post-SAH disassociation from the family. Now we will never know. I will cherish the memories of mum pre-SAH, as she was a lovely mum then.

Hi My mum had her SAH 10 years ago, and she has recently died. She was only 64. She became disabled and severely aged, and developed emphysema which is probably nothing to do with the SAH. Prior to her "blow out" as we called it, she was a lovely mum. Afterwards, she gradually turned into a really nasty person, who hated pretty much everyone. Her personality changed beyond recognition. All her friends abandoned her, and she never worked again. In the years following her getting ill, my sister and me tried and tried and tried again to get some sort of relationship with our mum. She wasnt interested in us at all. It came to a point where I didnt even want to phone my mum and ask how she was, because I couldnt stand the abuse and vile comments and language that came from her. In the last 2 years, Ive had nothing to with her, it was too painful for me. For me, my "mum" died when she had the blow out. We were never offered psychologists or counselling from the NHS in UK. If only we knew then what we know we would have pushed for it, and maybe mums personality change wouldnt have been so severe. She passed away just a few days ago, and has cut my sister and me, and her own mother out of everything. She made a will a few weeks before dying and has given everything to the hospital that did her surgery, even though she never had a good word to say about them. So, we are now left to contest her Will. Prior to the blow out she would have made sure the family home came to us, now its all so different. Anyway, we have solicitors contesting her Will now. Its not a classic case of someone having dementia so they didnt know what they were doing. She knew what she was doing, right down to planning her own funeral. Anyway, in England, these cases of contesting Wills is becoming more and more common, and even though she was of sound mind, the law will consider her SAH, and personality change, and will likely consider that her emotions were poisoned, so we will inherit after all. Our solicitor is gathering medical evidence just now. The evidence is strongly in our favour. Thats worrying that we were never made aware of all this years ago. Collecting statements from people who new her pre-SAH, during and after just compounds for us just how much her personality changed. I just wanted to share our experience, as I'm sure other people go through similar horrible things. Mark.