Early Signs

I've been thinking about early signs of Alzheimer's Disease. I'm trying to remember when Mom's first symptoms began to surface. I know it was at least 2 years before the diagnosis, probably more like 3. She had always been a perfectionist and had a place for everything and everything was in it's place and clean to a tee. Her sense of smell and hearing was always highly acute. She never seemed to have dreams or at least to remember them. Her driving was excellent. All these things began to slowly change. I attributed it to the stress and toll of caring for Dad's long term illness with Parkinson's Disease for 15 years. She started misplacing things more and more, forgetting names of well known loved ones, having vivid dreams that she thought were real, losing her sense of smell and her hearing was worsening as well. She started getting frightened and confused in the evening and thinking someone was trying to break in her house. She would hide her purse and then couldn't find it when it was time to go out. She talked about seeing deceased loved ones and other people she didn't know in the night that scared her. Her driving worsened and she would fall asleep while driving. she would confuse household items like the phone and the remote.
She said she could here people climbing on the house and trying to break in every night. She became incontinent early. She would get Dad's pills mixed up and hers.
Besides stress, we thought her other conditions or their medications might be causing side effects. She has HBP, Diabetes, Congestive heart, Pace Maker, Knee replaced, and all kinds of medicines to combat those.
But the diagnosis came 7 months after Dad past away on Dave's birthday July 11. Mom got the fateful call in February.