An
old man visits his doctor and after thorough examination
the doctor
tells him:
"I have good news and bad news, what
would you like to hear first?"
Patient: "Well, give me the bad news first."
Doctor: "You have cancer. I estimate that you have about
two years
left."
Patient: "OH NO! That's awful! In two years my life will
be over! What
kind of good news could you probably tell me,
after this???"
Doctor: "You also have Alzheimer's. In about three months
you are going
to
forget everything I told you."
Alzheimer’s disease makes up 50-60
percent of the many dementias that
leave a person confused. The disease
is irreversible
and progressive so
caretakers need to be on their toes thinking of new
adaptations as the
person loses skills.
Nowadays,
we almost associate the word
“Alzheimer” with
confusion, just like the word “Einstein” means genius.
Actually, Dr.
Alois Alzheimer was a very bright man who described the
illness
in
1907 as a relatively obscure disease. It was thought then that the
confusion
seen in older people was caused by vascular disorders,
such as strokes
or was
just a symptom of old age. But the doctor’s
first patient was a middle aged woman
and she did not present with
a stroke.
The latest
microscopic
techniques
allowed scientists to look at
the autopsied brain tissue that revealed
the 51
year old woman’s
cortex to be covered with plaques and tangles. By 1952,
hundreds
of these elderly brains revealed that the disease became progressively
more common as people aged.
There are many
other
types of
dementias that impact the ability
to think abstractly, to remember and
perform
physical tasks. The term
“dementia” refers to people who have declined from a
condition in
which they were once normal. The word “dementia” comes from the
Latin words “De” meaning away and “Mentia” –meaning mind. People
with
dementia have
declined from a condition of having presumably
normal intellectual functioning.
Some of the other
dementias include
those caused by thyroid
disease (which may be reversed),
arteriosclerosis, high
blood pressure
and heart disease. Some people get a double whammy;
Alzheimer’s
disease
and the dementia caused by strokes. Victims of Alzheimer’s
disease demonstrate
early problems with memory, misplacing things,
accusing others of
stealing,
repeating themselves because they forgot
that they already told you about Babe
Ruth’s grand slam. The may
hallucinate and have delusions in the later
stages.
Let’s compare my
mother, Sarah who
has Alzheimer’s disease
with my mother-in-law Katie, who has dementia
caused by mini strokes.
Katie raised seven children; she is a helper. She has
been
wandering
the halls of her nursing home, undressing other patients and pushing
their
wheelchairs for the past three years with little change in her
status.
My
mother was reading the words to her songs three years ago.
Now she can barely
speak or sing at all.
