Hello everyone I have been on here briefly in the past, although I use the other boards almost daily. I take care of a friend with alzheimers, but at the present I am on medical myself. Anyway she was diagnosised with NPH also. Anyone know anything about this?
I am really worried about her. This has effected her balance & she has fallen twice & ended up with broken bones.
I dont know to much about it & trying to gain more info. She is also wetting the bed now. I worry about her getting up at night. We have he in depends & all that & a bed alarm but her husband ignores it at times as he is not a mover & a shaker & needs care himself.
She seems to be getting worse quickly & hard to tell how much could be the NPH. She is so dear to me & I want to help her in anyway I can.
I cant get her interested in anything either. She loves when I play bingo with her every now & then, but that seems to be it. She was a very active women & cant stay on task anymore. I know this bothers her. I/we include her as much as we can but usually we end up finishing up for her. Although she still has very lucid moments which at times amazes us. She is very restricted for now because of the falls & healing. It can exhausting just keeping up with her. At times she remembers her restrictions but wont to cooperate. Such as she will wait till noones looking to do something, or instead of putting the recliner down she would scoot off of it because we could not hear her getting up. So we kind of guessed she knew what she was doing. This confuses the heck out of some of the caregivers.
She currently takes namenda x2 daily, aricept x1. Along with her other meds for various conditions.
At times we would notice she almost was worse at times after her AM dose of namenda but it it so hard to tell for the most part.
I am welcome any advice. She is happy when she is busy, any recommendations? She enjoyed some WII games, such as bowling, but soon forgot how to operate the control & I dont want to cause her more frustration. I am just a caregiver & friend, if it was my parent I would change her doctors. I dont care for them & getting info. at times is like pulling teeth. I am hoping when I get back to caring for her that I can talk the family into having her see a specialist for alzheimers.
Sorry this is kind of long but tried to include as much as I could in hopes of getting some good advice. Bless you all, as I know how hard & heartbreaking this desease leaves the family & caregivers. Sammy
Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (NPH) is a neurological condition which normally occurs in adults 55-years and older. NPH is an accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) causing the ventricles of the brain to enlarge, in turn, stretching the nerve tissue of the brain causing a triad of symptoms.
This is a treatable illness. A CSF shut is placed so that it drains the excessive cerebrospinal fluid. If treated early enough the symptoms will diminish as the pressure is reduced. It is often confused with dementia and/or alzheimer's. The major difference is that the first symptom is the shuffled gait rather than memory confusion or rigidity. My good friend's father has NPH and even through he still has some confusion, probably from vascular dementia, he improve greatly after his CSF shut was in place.
I also understand that Namenda can cause behavioral problem so the timing of those episodes should be watched and if there is a corrolation, it should be discussed with her doctor.
Good luck, you are a good friend to be so concerned. Hope you find the answers you are looking for and absolutely encourage the family to look for answers.
NPH is Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus. I checked up on it. What they are finding is that alot of people with dementia also have extra fluid in their brain. There are two tests that can be done to see if they have NPH. It involves removing a small amount of fluid from the head. IF they show improvement there is a three day that involves a lumbar drain. If these tests are successful a hunt is considered. By draining off the excess fluid, the majority of the patients return to their former selfs. Goggle it to read about the results.
Sammy, your friend is exhibiting the normal traits of people with dementia. She doesn't deliberately ignore your directions-she just can't remember what you told her to do. Her short term memory is shot-gone-lost. She can't remember what you told her five minutes ago, forget what the directions were about the recliner from two hours ago. That's history. It's not that she won't cooperate, it's that she can't. She doesn't remember how. She doesn't remember what you tell her. You can't rely on her to remember what you told her 5 minutes ago, much less a day ago or this morning. She doesn't do it to be troublesome, she has lost the capacity to cooperate.
The lack of interest is also common to the disease. If she has short term interest in anything you are doing well. That is part and parcell of the disease. My mom was an advid crocheter of scratchies- 1.5" wide net crocheted into circles that is used instead of scotchbrite for your pots and pans. Hers were a sight to behold. Perfect in shape and color. I cut up TEN YARDS of net in hopes of interesting mom in doing that again. Took out what i had started... Look Mom....she tossed it back to me, said it was crooked and that was that....no interest ever again. The lack of interest in previous hobbies and interests is common. If they start something don't expect them to continue it past a few minutes. They are much like a toddler and have little attention span.
If she has been married a long time it is difficult for her hubby to see her this way. He wants the wife that he had back. It's hard for him to see the love of his life act like this. If she used to take care of him he can't understand why she is like this because she still looks like the love of his life. I watched my parents go through the same thing and it's hard for husbands to undstand why the wife isn't the same as she was. Why she can't get up and cook and clean and take care of things.
As far as getting out of bed. My suggestion would be to get a bed that lowers down so that when she does get up it would be close enough to the floor that if she fell she wouldn't get hurt. I would also put one of those kindergarten pads on the floor so that she would land on it instead of the floor. This is what they did in the home where mom was. It's a safety feature that keeps them from getting hurt. They just bounce instead of breaking something. It's illegal to restrain an elder to the bed to keep them safe....
Sammy-
I have not been on the board for some time but while checking the URL for a friend I saw your post. My husband died from NPH in October after an over ten year bout with it.
Your post confused me a bit. You say your friend has been diagnosed with NPH and AZ. VERY unusual. From your description it sounds like typical NPH.
The symptoms of which are problems in a. gait/balance (hence the falls), b. urinary incontinence and c. mentation difficulties (memory, lack of concentration etc.).
At the onset it is frequently misdiagnosed as AZ (my husband was). Many physicians are simply not familiar with NPH. Diagnosis generally involves an MRI. A neurologist is usually called to make the diagnosis.
Unfortunately late diagnosis precludes effective treatment. Installation of a shunt to drain excess liquid from the skull before it presses on the brain and does permanent damage (very simplistic description), if done in a timely fashion, will completely reverse the symptoms. The operative words here are timely fashion. The operation to do this is not considered major and age is not a drawback.
I placed my husband in an ALF when I was simply not able to care for him any longer and he did not know me ("nice lady") or know his way around our house ("where do I sleep?"). At one time he was on both Namenda and Aricept. They were useless.
If there are any questions you I'll be happy to give them a try.
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