• Keep a good attitude. Caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's can be nothing short of challenging. A positive attitude is paramount.…
Alzheimer’s disease has been referred to as the “family disease”. Care for an individual with Alzheimer’s can be very difficult to cope with. It has a greater impact on the family members involved with the individual suffering from this disease, than other chronic diseases. There are support groups that can help family members adjust to this life changing disease. Alzhiemer’s disease also has an effect on businesses. Businesses are effected when they have employees who are also caregivers for people with Alzheimer’s disease. These cost to the business owners, includes paying out for: absenteeism; productivity losses; worker replacement cost; continuing insurance for workers on leave and temporary worker replacement fees; and Employee Assistance…
Imagine that one day - any random day of the week- everything is fine. You seem to have some difficulty in remembering simple things. Where are the car keys? What were you supposed to do that day? The next day, you and your family receive the terrifying news. You have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Slowly, over the course of the next few years, you will begin to forget everything about yourself. It is a terrifying thought, yet it is happening to nearly five million and four thousand people in America today (White, “The Genius of Caring: an interactive documentary”). Now, think about what it would be like to be the caregiver of those people. They are husbands and wives, sons and daughters, or close friends and…
Alzheimer’s and dementia can affect anyone, regardless of their intellectual capabilities or physical prowess. At Memory Care Home Solutions in Saint Louis, MO, the compassionate staff knows how challenging it is for families to watch their loved ones experience the debilitating effects of diseases that affect cognitive function. Pat Summitt and Muhammad Ali were just two of the tens of millions of Americans who suffer from Alzheimer’s or dementia, but their stories are inspirational to all.…
Has Alzheimer’s effected your family? If so, you’re not alone. I never knew much about it until a year ago when my grandmother Doris Addair got effected by the horrifying disease. Alzheimer’s is a progressive mental deterioration that can occur in middle or old age, due to generalized degeneration of the brain. It effects 5.3 million Americans today and has no treatment. This makes the disease the 6th most leading cause of death in the elderly, two thirds of them being women. Alzheimer’s doesn’t only effect the memory, but the physical and mental functions of one’s life as well. Brain changes that occur in Alzheimer's disease can affect the way you act and how you feel. People with Alzheimer's may experience Depression, Apathy, Social…
Alzheimer’s affects more than 5.1 million Americans and nearly as 44 million people worldwide. “Alzheimer's disease is a progressive, degenerative disorder that attacks the brain's nerve cells, or neurons, resulting in loss of memory, thinking and language skills, and behavioral changes,” (Alzheimer). Alzheimer’s is an illness that develops in individuals as they are aging and the number of cases of individuals developing Alzheimer’s have doubled in recent time. Alzheimer’s attacks the brain in ways the effects how a person lives their daily lives. It prevents people from being independent since it attacks the brain functions and causes them to become forgetful and confuse most of the time. During the early stages of Alzheimer’s individuals forget small things like where they placed something, and in later stages they…
Having Alzheimer's doesn't mean that the life of the patient is over. Living with Alzheimer's means that the patient have to manage some life changes sooner than expected. The patient can carry on with his life by dealing with his physical and passionate well being, by taking part in exercises to revel in and by investing time with family and companions. The process of living with Alzheimer involves the patient to take care of himself, family and friends taking care of the patient ,also coping with changes .…
Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic progressive deterioration of the brain leading to dementia, incapacitation, and death. Dementia is a condition marked by memory loss plus a minimum of one other cognitive impairment. Alzheimer’s disease has been referred to as both the plaque of the ages and the plague of the aged. Alzheimer’s disease was so poorly understood that people who suffered this dementia were label as tormented, affected, pixilated, weird, afflicted, senile, mad, crazy, and spellbound. People with Alzheimer disease were feared, avoided, ignored, and ridiculed. Years and years went by peoples suffered terrible inhuman treatment when their families hid them away from other family members, the public, restrained them at home, locked them up in rooms, and committed them to insane asylums. There are many symptoms follow a set course of decline. There are a wide spectrum of demented actions every person will exhibit every symptom is a downhill regression follow a general pattern of mental regression and physical decline. People with the Alzheimer’s disease the earlier symptoms are recognized the greater chances are to slow and prevent the progression of dementia. Symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease are short-term memory loss, confusion, disorientation, wandering, mood swing, sundowner’s syndrome, eating habits and weight loss(changes) personal care, depression, agitation, aggression, paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, incontinence, speech loss, or total incapacitation and death. Short-term memory loss is the first perceived and one of the most common critical symptom. When a peoples begin to have short-term memory loss they are aware of the errors and hides them form family members and friends. Confusion is when the people are not able to do simple tasks and procedures become increasingly difficult for the…
I can say, from personal experience, that Alzheimer’s disease has a huge impact on a patient’s family and/or caregiver. My grandmother is starting to show some signs of Alzheimer’s as she ages and my great grandmother, her mother, had stage 4 Alzheimer’s which inevitably led to her death several years ago. Alzheimer’s, in my opinion, is one of the worst diseases that a family can embark on together. There is nothing worse than having a close family member gradually not know who you are. My great grandmother was a very bright beautiful older woman that was otherwise healthy but could not even recognize her own children near the end of her life. In the videos the patient’s family and/or caregivers struggle with worry, priority and surveillance of the individual with Alzheimer’s. My family struggled with all of the same aspects through our experiences with this disease. At one point my great grandmother got lost in Dallas and ended up in a bad area, she was robbed at gunpoint and beaten by an individual. This tragic event was horrible for my family because we were trying to keep her within one area, much like the video, while still treating her like a person. The biggest struggle was trying to love and treat her as we once knew her while her mind diminished as the years went on. Like I mentioned before this disease is a process for not only the patient but the family as well. At some points it seemed as if it would be better to die abruptly than to die so slowly. I would not wish this illness on anyone and pray that those who are dealing with it make it along as my family did.…
As a person ages, it’s natural to become more inclined to forget things; from misplacing car keys to forgetting the name of an old friend. But the effects to ones memory caused by Alzheimer 's disease (aka: AD) are not at all considered normal. I think Belsky described AD best in saying “Alzheimer’s Disease directly attacks the core structure of human consciousness, our neurons. With this illness the neurons literally decay or wither away.” (“Experiencing the Lifespan”, Janet Belsky, 2007) According to the Alzheimer’s Associations informational website, alz.org, about 5 million people in the US are affected by the disease (What is Alzheimer’s, alz.org, April 1, 2010) . If the disease is not treated in good time, loved ones may experience a total over all change in the affected person’s demeanor. A normally calm, sweet person may become easily agitated and aggressive. Although there are no known cures at this time, the article I reviewed, Diagnosis and treatment of dementia: 1. Risk assessment and primary prevention of Alzheimer disease…
There are few things more painful than watching someone not recognize their own voice. The slow, inevitable disappearance of a once-whole person into a mere shell of what once existed is the main depiction behind Alzheimer’s Disease. This form of dementia is successful in slowly and painfully turning someone from active into a broken subconscious. A terrifying monster, Alzheimer’s Disease has signs and symptoms that can act as a warning for the affected – which includes the individual and their loved ones.…
Alzheimer’s disease is the number one form of dementia in the United States today. The more this disease progresses the worse it gets because there is no cure for it at this time. Most people do not show signs or symptoms of this disease or even get diagnosed until about age sixty-five. There is also no known cause for this disease and mostly people want to link Alzheimer’s to being hereditary. Mr. Speed will require secondary care especially in this case because Mr. Speed is barely in the early stages of the disease. When his disease progresses even more and is in the final stages, which can be five to ten years from now, maybe sooner, he will then require tertiary care.…
Alzheimer’s Disease By Anne O’Dell 8/10/2014 Alzheimer’s Disease & Associated Alterations uAlzheimer’s disease (AD) is a disease that attacks the brain. It is the most common form of Dementia which is the general term for a decline in mental ability serve enough to interfere with daily life (Poole Arcangelo & Peterson, 2013). uAlzheimer 's is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder.…
percent of the neurons in this region were lost. But a ten percent loss is…
As we all know one of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s is memory loss. Luckily for my siblings and I, she still remembered us, at the time. Sadly, I can’t say the same about my mother. Every time my mom would go to touch her, she would jump and would look at her with confusion on her face. As the day went by, we were all playing and talking to her. When it was time to go, my grandma stood outside and she looked at us and started sobbing. Watching the tears roll down her face broke my heart. I, myself started to shed a few tears. My mom explained to me to that my grandma was crying because she doesn’t get to see us that often. To this day I regret not spending as much time with her as I could while I still had the chance. If I would’ve known that that was going to be the last time she was going to be able to look at me in my face or speak to me then I would’ve videoed my time with her or spent the night. My grandma was only 57 years old when her symptoms started to show, she’s now 67 years old. If you could see her today, you would swear she was older than…