A-1 (imported) wrote: Mon Apr 30, 2007 5:39 pm I guess what I should say is that Alzheimer's disease is underdiagnosed.

There is a whole family dynamic phenomenon that goes along with it that often keeps everyone in denial and delays treatment of the patient until the disease is far advanced.

Only a good neurologist should diagnose Alzheimers and differentiate it from other cognitive nerological phenomenon that may or may NOT be stable. Then they should be the one who prescribes medication and treatment.

Saying that, "...oh (s)he's just a little forgetful" or that problems are to be expected "at that age" delays treatment and that is not good.

Be careful... you cannot always trust a general practitioner to make such a diagnosis because the best of them often becomes part of the family dynamics that I mentioned earlier.

A-1 sneaks into my apartment and moves my medications around so that I cannot find them. My late cat saw him. She told me about all this.

Blaise, take the pills, it's easier that way!

At 3am this morning my mother phoned me to say that my father is in hospital. I'm not allowed to call the hospital (don't know why but she insisted I didn't call), he apparently got up in the middle of the night to look for the next-door-neighbour's cat (don't ask!) and somehow he managed to climb a wall and fall off. I've now been instructed to wait until 2pm when my mother will call me to let me know how he is. Once she's called I guess I'm heading off down there (6 hours of driving!) because the thought of my mother driving back and forwards to the hospital whilst she's in a panic is not a good thought.

dingbat (imported) wrote: Wed May 02, 2007 4:13 am Blaise, take the pills, it's easier that way!

At 3am this morning my mother phoned me to say that my father is in hospital. I'm not allowed to call the hospital (don't know why but she insisted I didn't call), he apparently got up in the middle of the night to look for the next-door-neighbour's cat (don't ask!) and somehow he managed to climb a wall and fall off. I've now been instructed to wait until 2pm when my mother will call me to let me know how he is. Once she's called I guess I'm heading off down there (6 hours of driving!) because the thought of my mother driving back and forwards to the hospital whilst she's in a panic is not a good thought.

Oh boy! Now the fun begins.... You have my sympathies, Dingbat.

I was lucky - my mother fell and broke her pelvis. While she was in the hospital, I was able to clean out her apartment, and get her assigned a room in a nursing home that specializes in Alzheimer's patients. I was concerned about upsetting her, but the social workers all told me that she wouldn't remember much and so would not miss her apartment and all her stuff.

The best part was that I didn't have to transport her from the apartment to the nursing home (like a kidnapping almost), since the hospital took care of that. She had to go to the nursing home anyhow for physical rehab. so the rest was easy. Whew!

Getting back to your problem - it sounds like the time is right to get your parents into a proper faciltiy where their needs will be taken care of, but there will be locks on the doors and no car to drive, etc.... I don't know how this works in the UK, but over here it costs $$$!

Hi Dingbat,

Unless your pseudonym is an allusion to Edith Bunker it sure is inappropriate for you. Few people I know think things through as sensibly and realisticly as you do.

On the odd chance that it might help you I'd like to pass on the technique my wife and I used to stop her father from driving when Alzheimer's removed his ability to find his way home. (Strangely enough he did not become a dangerous driver but he did get lost easily and then he became frightened.) The ignition lock and the door locks on his car were keyed differently, so we just replaced his ignition key with another copy of the door key. The result was that he could get into the car but he could not start the engine. And of course we removed all other car keys from his apartment. Probably the main reason this worked was that, by the time he got to this state, they (my wife's parents) were living in an apartment in our home so that we could provide the transport they needed.

We made this change just in time. In the next month there were three occasions when my wife's mother awoke at odd hours (1:00-4:00 AM) to find him not in the apartment. He was sitting in the car, trying to figure out why it would not start. I really do not want to think about what might have happened if he had managed to start the engine.

There is one other thing I'd like to say to you, Dingbat (and to Mackie also). As a survivor of four terminal illnesses (my grandmother, my mother, both of my wife's parents) I can assure you that you must take care of yourself first or you will lose the ability to help anyone else. If anyone tells you that's selfish you can be sure you'll get no good advice from him.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

.