Hi @sallysue I am no expert on dementia at all, but I did work for years as a fundraiser for the national Alzheimer's Association and their medical research program. The disease can be quite different in each person. I think this is true of how most brain diseases act on folks. I know my wife reacted very differently to her brain cancer than anyone else I've met.

My MIL never experienced any hostility in all the years she fought it, but it is a fairly common symptom of the disease. On the other hand my daughter-in-law's father had quite a few months of hostile activity, which then stopped as suddenly as it started.

These types of things are so very painful to discuss, but if I learned one thing from my wife it was to talk and make decisions as soon as you can. As incredibly sad and uncomfortable as many of our discussions were, it made the journey a bit less rugged knowing I was able to follow what she wanted and our adult children and I never had to play the 'what would Mom have wanted' game.

Strength, courage, and peace!

@sallysue As @IndianaScott said, there is a whole host of manifestations! For my mother, there was no hostility, basically she just shut down. She had a combination of Alzheimer's and Dementia and became pretty much mute for the last several years of her life. She stopped driving about 8 yrs before her death. She would sometimes eat if you put food in front of her otherwise you had to feed her. She slept a lot. She would sit in a chair and just look out at things; it was one of those "lights are on but nobody's home" type of expressions on her face. [A sad story here. My mother was a lifelong smoker, even though she supposedly tried to quit several times. My father continued to light cigarettes and give them to her. Some little remote corner of her mind knew to smoke those cigarettes. A year after she had passed, as he was moving out of their house, he found several cigarettes that had been lit but slipped out of her hand and apparently rolled under the couch. In his grief and sorrow his comment was, "I never knew about these. I wonder if God told me it wasn't time yet and he let them burn out rather them starting a fire." My heart just had to break for him at that comment.
Ginger

Personality changes are common and may be short episodes or more lengthy. As dementia increases the changes become more permanent and noticeable