While I was growing up, my grandmother developed Alzheimer’s. She still has it today. It is hard to see her not remember who I am. I know that I am not the only one with a story like this so I want to help teach people how to help people with Alzheimer’s. I learned from my research of studying Alzheimer’s, people can learn how to prevent the disease, learn about medications for the symptoms, and learn about future medication trials, so Alzheimer’s can be prevented, delayed, and treated.
Taking care of elderly parents isn’t easy, as Kit, not her real name, found out.
Dementia Syndrome is a condition caused by a set of symptoms. These symptoms can include but are not limited to: - memory loss, mood changes, communication difficulties, difficulty understanding or thinking.
He smiled at me with tearful eyes as his pain slowly diffused away. 'Thank You Dr Duraiz!' he said. So exhausted he was, and in considerable pain, too, that he fell asleep within moments. My grandfather suffers from Alzheimer's disease and Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia. It was a cold winter night around 3 a.m that he became agitated and started complaining of abdominal pain due to urinary retention. As my parents were discussing for him to be taken to the hospital, i stepped in. I argued against him to be taken to the hospital. Living in a small town of Pakistan has it's own disadvantages. Not having proper medical care and/or a proper medical setup. Studying at one of the best medical schools, Aga Khan Medical College, i found our city hospital to be very unhygenic and was sure that my grandfather would end up having a urinary tract infection. Instead, i went to a medical supply department and bought all the equipment needed to catheterize him. And my decision paid-off well. My grandfather did not have to go through the trouble of being transported to the hospital and it gave me memory that i will cherish my entire life.
People who have dementia are not aware of requirements for living. They can forget to do the essential things that are vital. Taking medicines, hygiene and even eating are often forgotten. They can get lost or hurt and not understand what is necessary to correct a situation. Turning on the cooker or water and forgetting to turn it off again, locking doors, crossing streets etc can all be dangerous even deadly. In the same way as you would not think an infant capable of self care, a person with dementia cannot be either. Considering the facts that they cannot act in the manner of a
A topic I learned more of this semester in regards to the older population was dementia. Some loss in memory function is an inevitable consequence of aging, and as one ages, it takes more time to process information and retrieve memories. However, "Dementia is a general term that refers to progressive, degenerative brain dysfunction, including deterioration in memory, concentration, language skills, visuospatial skills, and reasoning, that interferes with a person's daily functioning" (Mauk, 2014, p. 377). This loss of mental skills affects the ability to function over time, causing problems with memory and how one thinks, impacting these individual's overall quality of life.
There are many diseases that result in dementia. The most common types of dementia are Alzheimer’s disease; vascular dementia; Pick’s disease; dementia with Lewy bodies (Fronto-Temporal); Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD); Huntington’s disease.
This essay is about a case study of Mr C who has dementia. Four principle approaches will be used throughout to determine the outcome.
Dementia is a progressive disorder that will affect how you’re brain functions and particularly your ability to remember, think and reason. Dementia usually affects older people and are approximately 820,000 people in the UK with the disorder, and around 15,000 are under the age of 65. If the dementia is recognised early enough that are a lot of things that you can be done to make the quality of life better. In a lot of dementia cases the symptoms and quality of life will progress and get worse over a number of years. The most common symptoms of a dementia patient are:
This is an 89-year-old, was transferred here from Vidant Medical Center in Greenville, North Carolina on 01/21, for a multitude of problems including altered mental status. The patient can communicate but not well enough to really give a history. I have obtained all this history from her daughter Cynthia who works here at Mayview. I am told that Mamie was born in Edgecombe County right outside of Tarboro and she lived the majority of her life in those areas of Edgecombe County, Pitt County, and Martin County. She got married at the age of 19, and had 13 children. Three of the oldest children have died. Cynthia lives here in Raleigh and her sister Brenda works in Raleigh, but lives in Clayton. Mamie's husband died of some type of respiratory
Before you are able to do an activity and get resident to be involved, you must be able to gain trust from them as this will get people to attend your group. In addition, you must choose activities and games relating to one’s level of functioning since you are working with resident who have different severity level of dementia. You must also learn and understand that you must be flexible when facilitating a group as anything can happen. For example, when one resident is not cooperating during a group or making a scene like making a fuss during an activity then you must be able to remove that residents or move onto another activity.
Dementia is a term used to describe symptoms associated with decline in memory or other
Dementia originated from the Latin language meaning ‘mind gone’. The course of the disease declines to the last stage and the person will forget majority of his or her memory. The patient will go about his or her normal ways during the first stage of dementia; eyes and mind are clear. During the beginning of the last stage, the patient will depend on the caretaker for his or her needs and will not recall the things he or she has learned. In the last phase of the last stage, the patient will be “born again”, meaning he or she will derive from the end of his life to the beginning. Similar to the Alzheimer’s disease, the nerve cells in the brain become short. The brain will not function properly because of the shrinkage of the nerve cells, but
Being first diagnosed with this disease the symptoms are often subtle and can go unnoticed. Some examples of this can be the person diagnosed with dementia can forget where the bathroom in their house is or that they left the keys in their car. Then the disease will progress to more noticeable effects such as not remembering the rules of the road and forgetting where you are going while driving. For Chris, in The Truth about Dementia, this is exactly what had happened to him. Chris for all of his life was into motorcycles and owned his own auto body shop. When he gave his license up after getting confused while driving, his symptoms seemed to get worse at what seemed like a fast pace. For dementia patients this is a normal process in their disease. Chris also stated that he while he still had some of his cognition left, he wanted to keep telling his family that he loved them because once his dementia progressed he knew he wasn’t going to be the same and problem not be able to tell
I was 16 when I learned what it meant to be dead. I had known of it before, but I didn’t really know death -- I was too young to really understand. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to ward off the waves from washing away my grandparents when they were in Mexico, and I was here. We were separated by oceans of land so our contact was limited. And the oceans only got deeper as I realized that Alzheimer's meant something beyond just memory loss. It meant I watched my Abuelito’s glassy eyes lead to an empty attic, and knew I was waiting for a tsunami to take it over like it had the rest of him.