My mom is 100 and in good health except for high blood pressure and some arthritis in her ankle. My brother and I are moving her to senior independent apartments where I will live with her 4 days a week. They have a nurse check them once a day. They serve dinner at night.
My mother can shower, dress herself, make her own breakfast and lunch and email me 4x a day. HOWEVER, she will forget a conversation we have an hour later. She asked me to show her how to view her bank account online. (She used to be able to). I tried to show her on Thursday but there was something wrong. I will have to call their tech dept. to see what it is. Then Friday morning she again asked me to show her how to see her bank account. I told her we tried yesterday, something is wrong and I will have to look into it. It might have only been an hour later, she asked me to show her again how to check her bank account online. She forgot that I had explained to her (and even tried to do it with her once)
So in a few months, since we decided to move her and it initially stressed her - her memory is going downhill. She knows it but doesn't really want to know if it's Alzheimers or not since she's 100.
I'm ok with that if there is nothing proven that could be done to help her memory whether it's Alzheimers or Dementia.
Does anyone know if there's anything that really works out there? My father had Alzheimers and took Namenda but we don't know if it helped or not. How can you know?
Also, if it's Dementia how bad can it get and how fast? (Of course I'm googling that too but I like hearing from real people.)
Thank you!
Allow your dear mother to live the rest of her days in peace, on HER terms, without interference of any kind, unless she needs to get rushed to the ER for something acute.
All the best of luck
Alzheimer’s is a disease condition resulting from “plaques” developing in the brain. One of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease is dementia.
At 100, she is entitled (in my opinion) to NOT know anything she decides, one way or the other.
She APPEARS to be comfortable with acknowledging that her “memory isn’t what it used to be”. If that is so, GREAT!
Unless you have confidence that a trial of a medication is going to be substantially helpful in making her life better, OR she insists on trying it herself, what other reason would there be?
My mother 95% of the time knows who everyone is. Occasionally when she's super stressed, she may ask who is so & so.
Thank you so much.