Who Cares What Nansi Thinks?

I cannot tell you what an amazing journey I've been on over this past year. The people around me might tell you that I've struggled, but I've learned so much.

In the first weeks of my job I was given the lovely task of filing. *ugh* I noticed an aptitude test that the Director of the Alzheimer's Care Unit was required to pass. One question seemed to jump off the page at me.... "Define Confabulation".... The answer is: the replacement of a gap in a person's memory by a falsification that he or she believes to be true.

I went home that night and googled the word. A simple explanation would be this... one might remember sitting in a chair by the window. Then they remember sitting at the dining room table. They don't remember the journey from point A to point B, so they may say "I got up from my chair and walked to the dining room. Then I sat down, now here I am!" But the truth is, they stopped in the bathroom and washed their hands. They don't remember that. So they confabulate. They make an assumption of what probably happened and accepted that as the truth.

This is an overly simplified explanation. My mom confabulates. She'll talk about overhearing a phone conversation. She quotes both sides of the conversation, even though it's not possible for her to have heard the person on the other end.

Personality has a huge impact on how a confabulater confabulates. If they enjoy the victim role in their lives, they'll imagine all sorts of offenses. If they're pretty upbeat, or positive, their assumptions are more benign.

My mom is what I call a "me too" confabulator. A few months back my mother had a room mate who had been horribly injured. Her ankle had pretty bad fractures and she was required to wear a boot almost all of the time. The only time the boot came off was bed time. Putting the boot back on was a nightmare. The resident realized that she needed it, but would scream and complain whenever it was put on her. No amount of gentleness could accomplish a completely pain-free application of the boot.

One night the resident wanted to get up. The CNA put the boot on her. Of course, there was much commotion and protest. Mom later reported that the aid walked over and just twisted Mom's leg out of meanness. The aid swears that it didn't happen and mom's room mate backs up the CNA's story.

Mom could pass a lie detector test. To this day she swears that the CNA deliberately hurt her. She empathized so much with her room mate that she imagined the same scenario on herself.

I used to be so horrified by the "lies" my mother would tell. But some of them can be attributed to confabulation and the phenomenon of assumptions becoming memories.