Battling Alzheimer

Okay, this is my last post on the whole dementia, Alzheimer’s and sex subject. But this subject really has me thinking about the rights of people with dementia.

Is a 14 or 15 year old any more able to give consent than a person with dementia?

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Yesterday, we talked about the fact that incontinence and Alzheimer’s disease are companions.

Today, I want us to investigate incontinence a little deeper. We’ll look at types of incontinence and some differences between men and women. Hopefully, we’ll help you to be able to ask the right questions and/or figure out if your loved one’s incontinence is temporary and due to some underlying medical issue, or if it’s the incontinence brought on as Alzheimer’s disease progresses.

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You’ve been thinking about it, but you are not sure if it’s really time to take the car keys from your loved one who has Alzheimer’s disease.  Below is a list to help you make the decision, but in the meantime keep these thoughts in mind.

Alzheimer’s is not just “getting old” and losing memory.   So the, “to drive or not to drive” issues are more complicated than driving too slowly, or getting a little turned around in terms of directions. 

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Do Alzheimer’s patients have civil rights? Of course, they do. But what are they? How do they get them? In the area of civil rights, they are under a double or triple cloud. Last month the Alzheimer’s Society in the UK issued a new report about abuses of Alzheimer’s patients.

Why do Alzheimer’s patients have trouble getting their civil rights? First, they are vulnerable and powerless. You can’t stage a protest march when you’re in a wheelchair and need someone to push it. You can’t organize a boycott when you no longer pay your own bills. You can’t give impassioned speeches if you can’t organize your thoughts. And a disproportionate number of people with dementia are African American or Hispanic, since those groups have a disproportionate amount of stroke, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

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One reason why Alzheimer’s disease is so difficult to treat, and sometimes even to identify, is that its symptoms can be caused by other diseases. Earlier I mentioned that, besides Alzheimer’s, my grandmother also had macular degeneration - she was losing her vision in her 60s, and was legally blind for thirty years. Sensory deprivation can cause delusions in itself. People with macular degeneration can hallucinate. Perhaps the mind, struggling to make sense of the fog it sees, gets a little too creative.

Alzheimer’s is primarily a disease of the old, and the older you are, the more likely you are to have it. There are hundreds of thousands of exceptions, in both directions. Kris, who writes Dealing with Alzheimer’s, is one of hundreds of thousands of people under 65 who have early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. 82-year-old blogger Millie Garfield, who writes My Mom’s Blog, has a better memory than I do. The ageless project lists ten bloggers over 75.

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An article published in Neurology, December 11, 2007, suggests that more than 85% of older Americans have some form of brain disease, even if they have no symptoms. In other words, you can have the plaques and tangles in your brain which are typical of Alzheimer’s disease, and practically speaking, it may not be Alzheimer’s. That is, it may not affect your behavior or thinking at all.

The study done at the Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, like the Nun Study of Dr. David Snowdon, involved dissecting brains, not living people. Both studies came to similar conclusions about multiple causes for dementia. I recall Snowdon’s surprise when he discovered that the brain of one sharp, intelligent participant was full of Alzheimers’s-like structures. His conclusion, and the conclusion of the Rush University researchers, was that if you never have a stroke, symptoms of dementia may never appear.

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I’m not a professional Alzheimer’s caregiver. I’m a grandson. I’ve been recognized for my work in taking care for my grandmother at a home health conference, but I’ve never formally studied the disease. I’ve just studied my grandmother. Through this blog, I’ll be sharing some of what I’ve learned, and what others have learned, about how to face and fight Alzheimer’s disease. My grandmother died in 2006 in her early nineties. We could have done much better for her. You can read more about this blog on our About page.

During the two years that I lived with my 90-year-old grandmother and helped her with her Alzheimer’s, I had to explain her condition to many healthcare workers, respite workers, and well-meaning relatives. I wrote pages and pages of instructions. And what were in those instructions? Of course, I explained her routines and habits, suggesting how to make her feel more comfortable. Like many elderly Alzheimer’s patients, she also suffered from blindness, deafness and arthritis, so she was challenged, as they say.

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