Quote:
Originally Posted by Villages PL
I never heard that there could be a difference between the left and right nostril.
The first thing that happened to my father was that he had a few mini strokes. These were strokes that lasted only about 3 seconds. He thought he was going to fall down but it didn't last long enough for him to fall. Then the next thing we noticed was that he had NO sense of smell, and that was with both nostrils. About 3 decades later he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's.
But loss of smell alone will not give you a diagnosis of Alzheimer's with any certainty. That's because there can be other causes.
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My dad also had a series of mini strokes........many many many mini strokes beginning in his sixties. He also had been a long time smoker of Camel's cigarettes since age 14 (no good) and was born with a congenital heart problem , one of a set of twins (the twin died at birth) in 1899.
Different generation re the smoking habit.
My mom was almost a dozen years younger than him......and was his only caregiver when he had to quit work and take early retirement.
These mini strokes continued until he began having mild heart attacks.
In the 1960's there wasn't the treatment there is now.
He slowly , very slowly became SENILE. He thought I was his sister Rose and he thought my infant daughter was ME.
My mom had to go to work and was afraid to leave him alone; concerned that he would burn the house down. Eventually, he died. My husband actually carried him into the emergency room as the "workers" didn't want to come out into the rain........
My mom was much older when her "confusion" began...........
In the beginning, no one thought there was anything wrong with her at all.
She was in excellent physical health; her doctor later said that for her age she had the heart , lungs, bones, etc. of a much younger person......
However, she would lose things and forget things.
Everything in her home was "disappearing".........even her African Violets.
She would also walk down to her hairdresser every single day thinking it was her Saturday appointment. Henry would tell me, "Your momma is confused". I actually had no clue by what he meant by "confused". I never thought Alzheimers.......never. It wasn't in the news that much.
She would walk to mass every day, thinking it was Sunday.
She would forget to send the kids birthday cards. We thought she was mad at us.
Her calendars would disappear, even though we marked them for her.
She'd call us and say that she was so HOT in her home.
We'd go and she had the thermostat set to the highest temperature.
She would call us to say she had "lost her pocketbook".....she was like Sophia on THE GOLDEN GIRLS, never without her purse.......we'd go to the house and look and look.......once we found it "behind the couch"........she didn't remember putting it there.
Before my stepdad died, he was "her other half of the brain"; he would write notes for her to take to the supermarket to get him some kind of cheese or other thing.......and by the time she got there, she forgot what she went for.............it's these little things.
But she still had her "social skills" and if we had visitors and she was with us........everyone thought there was nothing at all wrong with her.
My older brother told me that I "read too much"......
She forgot how to turn the television on.....so we'd write up instructions on how to dial to the Lawrence Welk Show, etc.......to no avail.
It was much easier when she came to live with us.......as long as I put her meals in front of her, laid out her clothes and helped her dress, helped her bathe, etc.........and expected nothing......she was FINE. She no longer had to think. Her geriatric doctor could not administer the cognitive test to her and told me he was very sorry for me but "Your Mom is severely demented with Alzheimers" To me, demented meant crazy. She was not crazy with us at all. She had become a docile little lamb. Her feisty younger self had GONE. She really was easy.......except for the wandering.
She had Sundowners Syndrome and would wander at night.
I could write a whole book on the "wandering"............
My dad never did that.
She lived with us for a long time until she could no longer get into the bathtub..........and I could no longer bathe her in the shower as she was afraid of the shower ..............
We arranged an assisted living type community care home (suggested by her adult daycare center).....and she did well there with a lot of her old friends.........until she began losing a lot of weight on ARICEPT meds..........
After a few years , ended up in a wonderful SKILLED NURSING HOME in the Alzheimers Unit for the last 18 months of her life..........again, "The Long Goodbye"........10 years all told........and I bet she had it sooner. She died at age 91 and was buried on Mothers Day.
My dad's senility from the mini strokes and mild heart attacks was totally different than my mom's dementia and Alzheimers.
The doctor wrote on her death certificate. VASCULAR. That's it.
Not Alzheimers as they really can't prove that unless they do a brain autopsy. But that was the diagnosis of several of her doctors.
One thing..........although her "short term memory" ended much sooner, her LONG TERM MEMORY was there until the very end......and she still remembered her father who died in 1919 and her mother who died in 1959 and called them by their Ukrainian names...........and would ask me daily "how are they".........she knew me until almost the end. She remembered the address she lived at as a little girl of 7 when her dad died of the flu. Long term memory is retained. She didn't remember my dad and she didn't remember my Irish stepfather......go figure.
She knew me, my husband, our kids.......for awhile.
I don't worry at all about getting Alzheimers as my long term and short term memory are just fine...........plus we all have to go from something.
I will be interested to know about the "aluminum connection" as she did use a lot of Kaopectate when they took Senior Citizen Bus Trips all over the country and she had a nervous stomach, and that supposedly has aluminum in it. Her doctors had tried her on thyroid drugs and various things.....lastly the Aricept which made her worse.......and caused her to lose her appetite.
At the very end, the skilled nursing home had a doctor who was doing research on new drugs for alzheimers and wanted to try it on my mom but when I read the side effects , I refused...........saying she had been through enough......he wasn't a happy camper........she died within the month.........very peacefully.......on my dad's birthdate and her mom's death date.
P.S. BEFORE SHE CAME TO LIVE WITH US, WE CLEANED OUT HER HOME........and were surprised to find so many "expired" items of dairy products and other foods in the frig.........we had respected the privacy of her and my stepdad and they would eat many meals at our home, not just for holidays......so I never looked in her frig as I didn't realize there was anything wrong with her...........in comparing notes with friends later.........I found out that this is one of the early symptoms again of the confusion that goes along with Alzheimers...........no understanding of date or time or place.