my mother was diagnosed with dementia/alzheimers disease. she has always been on alot of meds, and was diagnosed after going to hosp.by ambulance, because she had been picking and choosing which meds to take for a month. she was disoriented, could'nt walk, etc.
all i know is they tested her for dementia and told my dad she flunked the test really bad. she also flunked that test about 10 yrs ago when she had a tia. she had 2 more tia's over a 5 yr span. she stopped walking good, falling all of a sudden(but never getting hurt), very confused, only cooking easy meals and doing laundry. she said her tia's caused that??
getting to the present...she has everything on a time schedule for her and dad. testing her sugar(a recent diabetic), eating, and going back to bed after breakfast and lunch. my dad does this also, he rests his eyes(he says). he has no patience with her, does everything for her so she does'nt mess up, but drops her off to do grocery shopping on her own!? she refuses to do any other chores, and won't even walk down the drive to get mail. dad finally admitted she can't write cks anymore and took that away, also, throws out any catalogs, donations wanted, and magazine subscriptions that come in the mail. for maybe 5 yrs, she has been ordering everything in catalogs that don't fit, she does'nt remember ordering, and puts it all in her closet. she gives money to all of the charities, if they send her labels, calendar, etc. she gives more to pay for them. orders all magazines, sometimes the same one 2 or 3 times, and they come about a day apart. she does'nt realize she just got that issue.
i do not believe she has had any of the other tests done to prove ad or dementia.
what i need to know is, is there a list of signs for both? are they the same?
does anything you read above set off bells? i really need to be informed as dad has just given up, it seems.
could you please help me?

bevann

Oh Bev Ann ....... what a horrible mess things are in for you right now ... sorry you have to be here, but we're a pretty good bunch of people with some varied ideas who have ranted and raved ourselves .. so you are amongst friends for sure!

First of all, what you need to do is make sure there is a Power of Attorney over Mum AND Dad .. (yes, and Dad) you will need to find a Lawyer who specialises in the elderly. It's hard to get a POA signed off if the dementia tag has been signed off on, but sometimes they can 'tweak' things .. ultimately, now is the time you become the adult and your Mum becomes the child.

This is probably the hardest thing to do, this role reversal, because it just doesn't sit properly .. parents are supposed to look after us until the end .. not the other way around .. but alas, dementia hasn't read that part of the book and does its own thing.

There are roughly 70 kinds of dementia's 'out there', alzheimers being just one of them, there are chemical induced dementia's (eg: from incorrect medication taking) Vascular dementia, temporal lobe dementia's, pick's disease, Parkinson's disease.. the list is growing daily, so it's not a matter of making sure Mum has the right label, but making sure she's SAFE, DRY AND FED. That's no easy feat with someone who know's their a grown up but is no longer capable of making informed decisions on their own.

See our sticky list of the 'level's of dementia (just a rough one) and it will help you figure out where to start.

Our other members will be along soon enough with some more input (are you in the STates? I'm in Australia, so my rules are sometimes a little different) so they might have some more specific information for you.

Hugs & Welcome
:angel:

Welcome Bev Ann,

You will find that all of us are either where you are now, getting there, or have been there. There is not much that can be done to help a person with dementia, but there are ways of making life a little easier for those who live with them.

You didn't say how old your parents are. If this is too much strain on your Dad (sleeping after breakfast and again after lunch makes him sound very very old -) I would venture a guess that if he is in his 80s, he probably cannot be expected to take care of his wife's needs.

Your Mom needs to be in a place where all those things which are now way to hard for her are taken care of by someone else. My mom couldn't write checks for about 4 years before we even suspected AD, since she also had an eye problem .. but eventually I realized it was not seeing them but figuring out what they were for!

Your Mom cannot have access to mail order catalogs; someone else has to throw them out before she sees them and makes out more silly orders. I know from experience that it is next to impossible to stop them from coming in the mail - the companies ignore your requests to stop sending them. Maybe a change of address (have them sent to YOUR house to be thrown out!) would help. Or lock the mailbox and don't give her access to a key. She may well be throwing out important things. My Mom once threw out the payment notice for her supplementary health insurance which came every 3 months - she was SIX months behind on payments and never noticed. They almost dropped her from coverage. I finally got home early and got the mail one day when the final renewal notice was in the box. Eventually she forgot there was such a thing as letters and never got mail in.

My Mom is now in a Nursing Home and is very happy there. I think she is in about Stage 5, close to 6 now. Her memory is very poor, but on top of that she has no judgment or common sense. She could never be at home alone and would be a total burden to anyone trying to care for her. Last year (she was in my care until June 05) she burnt up pans and pots, a toaster oven, threw out good food and stashed yucky decaying food all over the house, put flthy underpants back in the drawer, etc.

I personally cannot imagine ANY man, never mind an elderly gentleman, doing any of that kind of care for her -- so I suggest a really nice home for both of them. Some group or family homes allow couples to be together. Your Mom needs lots of care, and professionals are trained to give it without the emotions and grief, denial, pain and disbelief a family member goes through (thus clouding their own judgment.) I remember being appalled when someone here suggested Mom could take a mild sleeping pill when I complained about her waking me up all night, accusing me of having entered her home, and asking who I was! ("Mom I'm your daughter, I have been living with you for the last 5 years ..")

and I reacted with anger ! NO more pills! She is already on 5 drugs for her heart failure, and I will NOT ask the Dr for another one! I was convinced the drugs were causing her confusion ...

Maybe you can inquire at your nearest Alzheimer Organization - but I lived in NY at the time and got no help at all from that agency - in fact outside of requests for contributions, they did not help me in any way. THIS Board saved my sanity.

Good luck and God be with you in your decision making. I am 67 and Mom will be 98 in October ....

love,

Martha

thank you both for replying so soon. i had'nt put everything down in my post, did'nt want to overwhelm you all.
ma is 74, and dad 77. dad gets the mail, and disposes of everything he does'nt want her to see. he does give her pub.clearing house though, says it gives her something to do and she has really believed they are sending her money for yrs. now! i don't know if this is good, getting her excited with it or not?
i live in florida..usa. my parents live in new hampshire. i only stay near them for 3 mos. in the summer. distance is a major problem for me. i have to live in a warm climate though, dr's orders. i am 56 now, and have been disabled for 13 yrs. i just moved to florida in 2004, when dh retired. all of us had lived in mass. prior to that. ma&dad moved to nh to be near my son. he works so much, hardly gets over, but does call them every day.
i am the oldest, having 2 sisters, and 2 brothers in mass. my dad just said again this a.m. that the nuerosurgin she saw after her first tia, said everything was from that. said he never heard from their dr. that she had dem/ad. i was told when she was in hosp. from oncall dr. that her dr. had faxed him her chart, and that was diagnosis on chart.
is the baby step walking (she also walks with a cane only outside, but holds it up, not touching the ground at all) part of her diag.?
my father talks to me every day yr. round, and complains about what she's doing now, from putting a paper plate in the toaster oven, to setting off fire alarm all the time, burning food, and sometimes empty pans. but, this is from tia! dad and other siblings are in denial and thinks i'm the crazy one, i guess! i did talk to my sister though, wanting her to talk to the others, and see if they can drive the 2 hrs. 1 of them a month, and spend the nite, to see how everything is. she said she will, but was upset with me. said she saw ma 2x this summer, she was fine, except for a hearing problem!
dad is proud, always a perfectionist(that's why he gets upset with her), still thinks i am a child and he knows best, and a stubborn englishman!
i did convince him to let me handle ordering of all meds, online(after she messed up so bad with them), also, this summer he put me as a signer on his cks(this was a major thing to convince him of!)
wow, i have talked way too much! thankyou for that levels list, maybe, i can convince everyone with that(doubt it!) looking forward to more inputs, this is major stress for me....oh..my youngest brother is health proxy(too busy to even call them once a wk!) i am going to try to get dad to change that, so i can have direct access to her so-called dr. (i never thought he did what he should for them) dad won't change, because this dr. jokes and talks alot to him!
peace to everyone on this board.........bevann

TIA (mini strokes) is one of the leading causes of Dementia. Perhaps the doctor did not want to alarm her by mentioning Alzheimer which scares us all. But all her behaviors are very similar to the ones my Mom has, and she was diagnosed with Old Age Dementia.

The little shuffling steps, however, sound to me like Parkinson's disease. Or she is being very careful not to fall.

It is hard to be so far away. My family is spread out - I only have one of my 3 children near me, the other 2 are in Germany and in Miami, FL. My Mom is in a nursing hme on Long island (NY) near my brother. My sister is in Ohio. and her kids are in VA, NV and PA.

Good luck to you!

Love,
Martha