Elder Care & Elder Rage: Know the Warning Signs of Alzheimer’s

For eleven years I pleaded with my ‘challenging’ elderly father to allow a caregiver to help him with my ailing mother, but he always insisted on taking care of her himself. Every caregiver I went ahead and hired soon sighed in exasperation, ‘Jacqueline, I just can’t work with your father. His temper is impossible to handle and I don’t think he’ll accept help until he’s on his knees himself.’ When my father’s inability to continue to care for my mother nearly resulted in her death, I stepped in despite his loud protests. It was so heart-breaking as one minute he’d be my loving dad, and then some trivial little thing would set him off and he’d call me nasty names and throw me out of the house the next. I took him to several doctors, only to be flabbergasted that he could act completely darling and normal when he needed to. Finally, I stumbled upon a thorough neurologist, specialized in dementia, who put my parents through a battery of blood, neurological, memory tests and P.E.T. scans. After ruling out numerous reversible forms of dementia, such as a B-12 and thyroid deficiency, and evaluating their many medications, I was stunned by the diagnosis of Stage One Alzheimer’s in both of my parents – something all their other doctors missed entirely. What I’d been coping with was the beginning of Alzheimer’s, which starts very intermittently and appears to come and go. I didn’t understand that my father was addicted and trappe...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - Category: Health Medicine and Bioethics Commentators Authors: Tags: Aging Caregiving Chronic Conditions Guest Posts Source Type: blogs