The first of the hallucinations/delusions was when Cal surprised me with “Patches,” a Calico kitty that had come to live with us. Patches was the easiest pet to care for than any we had ever had and there had been a steady stream of dogs, cats, gerbils, fish for most our marriage. This time no feeding, sand boxes, vet bills, cleaning up hair on clothes and furniture and shoveling poop required. Later he did want us to pick up a couple of Tabbies, Pixie and Data, from the Seattle Animal Shelter as companions for us and Patches. That worked out fine Cal told me that the three of them “played” well together. The two new additions to our home, loved to cuddle on Cal when he was napping. I finally found out what Patches looked like when we were at PetCo, Cal pointed out a picture on the side of a cat food bag that he said looked like Patches, now I knew what our invisible kitty looked like that sharing our home.
This is an “interesting” symptom of Parkinson’s. It was also made for fun sharing at Parkinson’s Support. Cal was not the only Parkie (a term affectionally used at one of our Support Groups for the person with Parkinson’s) experiencing hallucinations, one of the Parkies had a Unicorn that escorted her to and from the bathroom in the middle of the night.
These were benign hallucinations, nothing dangerous, harmful or frightening.
Within a couple of years of Cal’s Parkinson’s Diagnosis, he made the decision that all guns needed to be removed from the house for everyones safety. With the help of our children, they were removed. This proved to be an excellent idea a few years later when the Parkinson’s had progress. I was never in danger, but that simple step removed a very real possibility of a serious harm.
Most of Cal’s hallucinations consisted of things like a racoon in a very large Camilla bush outside of one of our kitchen windows. The Camilla was real, the racoon was not, he was concerned about the safety of Pixie and Data from the racoon if I didn’t run the racoon off, which I did when it “showed” up. By that time Patches wasn’t around as much.
One of the middle-of-the-night hallucinations was that there was an intruder in the house and I would have to go from room to room checking in closets, under beds, behinds doors, etc to make sure that no one was here. It sometimes took a while for him to feel safe enough to go back to sleep. We would talk, and I would reassure him we were alone and safe.
The worst one was, funny now but not so much at the time. I woke up out of a deep sleep in the middle of the night with multiple men’s voices just inside our front door and very close to our bedroom. I sat straight up in bed (I am glad that I had long since given up on sheer night gowns) and yelled “What the Hell is going on?” One of the Officers said everything was alright that Cal had called 911 and told the dispatcher that his Mother was dead in the guestroom bed (which is across the hall from our bedroom). There were several police officers, in uniform with big guns (not drawn) and several Fire Department personnel with their equipment and they all filled our entryway at the front door. You could not have fit one more person in our entryway and it is a pretty good size entryway. I informed them that his Mother was next to his Father at Washelli Cemetery and had been there since around 1985 and hadn’t been moving around that I was aware of…. I don’t remember exactly when this happened but sometime around 2012-2015, about 5 years after his diagnosis. After I was able to explain to them that Cal had Parkinson’s, and there no way his Mother could be here they understood what had happened wished us a good night and if I needed anything to call.
-Peg