Dementia

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A friends wife has had it for a few years now. It has got quite bad.

Someone in the family was diagnosed a couple of years ago, she’s now in full term care, really shocking decline.

Dementia is the future health issue that doctors fear most.

It killed my father, fortunately his decline was eccentric rather than aggressive and he had a quiet fading away rather than a terrified, confusing departure.

In a way his slow decline softened the blow of his passing; the body died long after the man I knew had disappeared. His first symptoms were loss of navigational confidence when driving, and then mildly inappropriate social behaviour such ignoring the family in favour of joking with baffled strangers. Odd rather than unpleasant, coupled with giving up reading, then television, then any kind of work, finally losing all independence and conversation.

All old people have memory issues - it's completely normal. But after what happened to dad, I worry more than I should after finding myself upstairs with no idea what I'm looking for! Apparently keeping the brain active helps slow down its decay. Perhaps all this Armchair engineering is a good thing after all!

Dave

34046,

"Just something as simple as forgetting things can be signs of the onset"

Do be sure that what you are witnessing is actually dementia and not just the forgetfulness myself and probably half those of us who correspond on this forum exhibit as a result of just getting older. That is very different.

The real thing is as you say progressive and not treatable and it becomes a heavy burden for everyone concerned. I have experienced it at close quarters, you have my sympathy and I am sure that of many others if that is the situation you are facing

Regards Brian

Edited By Brian Wood on 20/01/2020 15:27:38

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A friend of mine in our club has had it for a few years but he keeps fighting it by, as mentioned, keeping his brain active. He's designed and built two superb 2½" gauge locos and is now working on a third. He's also building a Vee twin petrol engine and a hit and miss engine. He's determined to carry on model engineering as long as he possibly can. He puts a lot of us too shame!

To make matters worse, he's also got Parkinson's which is slowly getting worse, but he takes it all in good heart and doesn't let it get him down. I think that is what helps to keep him going.

John

After reading all the gory details of tanks hit by AP rounds in ' Taming the Panzers', reading this has

really cheered me up.

Sorry to hear of your sad position 34046. I work in health care and as far as I know there are several different types of dementia but sadly none of them are preferable to any of the other types of dementia. As far as I know there is no way of predicting or preventing these conditions, although long term exposure to head trauma (even very mild) is thought to be one cause. I think some medications can slow down the progress in the earlier stages but it really is a horrible illness to witness.

Both my parents have dementia, in my mother's case very advanced Alzheimer's, which we noticed the onset of nearly twenty years ago. My wife and myself now live with them virtually full time in their own home.

My mother cannot put two words together coherently; my father is somewhat better but still has significant dysphasia and dysgraphia. Virtually everything you would consider part of a normal daily routine is either difficult or impossible for them. They are effectively pre-school children in their level of dependency, but much heavier to pick up when they fall (it's not a five-minute or one-man job), and their learning curve is one of exponential decay.

My mother is doubly incontinent, and if uninvigilated uses random places in the house as her toilet, sometimes several different places for one toilet trip (nappies go on, but don't always stay on long enough to be any use when they're needed). She also has wanderlust and recently went missing for a few hours at nightfall, entailing frantic scouring of the neighbourhood (she was waiting at a bus stop about a mile from home) and police involvement. Wearable trackers are out of the question, because, like virtually all precious or apparently precious things that come within her gaze, they would be consigned to a safe place, i.e. effectively lost or binned, in very short order. Only last week my father couldn't find his wedding band (a very heavy 22ct 1904-vintage one that had belonged to a grandfather); after three hours of searching he found it wrapped in toilet paper - in the toilet bowl; miraculously, he had thought twice before flushing.

But we find ways to keep our spirits up, with things like our own take on neuro-linguistic programming: "onwards and downwards" can be a surprisingly heartening motto if you say it often enough.

Two and a half years ago we noticed my wife was having problems with her memory and after 6 months managed to get her tested at the local hospital and yes there was the start of dementia but eat healthy and get plenty of exercise and do not bother us.Eighteen months later ie about ten minutes ago i had to take to the toilet has she cannot remember where it is.We have lived in the same two bed bungalow for 28 years.She gets to the elderly medicine centre every 4/5 months and gets very little help from them.You are a burden on them and they just want you to hide away and be quiet.

+

Sept, Oct last year I was forgetting things, But coming up to mid Oct, my sister was visiting, she decided that I needed to see my GP, he sent me off for an MRI scan, then off to the neurosurgical ward where I was informed that surgury was required as i seemed to have a tumor in my top 2", that done they removed most of quite a large cancer, I,v had radiotherapy, and continuing with Chemotherapy. People are commenting on how much better I look. This could have been mistaken by some as a form of Dementia, but I was told that if I had waited 2 weeks, I would not have left hospital walking, it would have been feet first.

Ian S C