hi dancing mum. ↲I look after my grandad. He was diagnosed with AD around 2 years ago. He's still very active and strong. He's 87 and still fiercely independent. He can get himself up, washed, dressed and do his breakfast cereal etc but then doesn't put the milk away or wash up. He has carers in in the mornings to make sure he's done all this and give his meds. He can't choose his clothes, and doesn't realise when they need changing. We sort that out for him. He can't use his tv or washing machine. He can't cook a meal, but can heat himself a tin of soup and make a sandwich. His score, several times, last year was 20 (both before and after a house move from yorkshire to suffolk to live near us ). He lives on his own in a bungalow. In october he scored 26! Even tho he had got worse, and at xmas was scored by a consultant as 22. The scores to me don't seem to mean much because he's so much less able to fend for himself, and we can see his deterioration so clearly, yet officially he scores better now than he did a year or more ago! We had no choice but to get him to move near to us, despite the fact we were advised that it would make him much worse, which it no doubt has, though not as badly as we feared it would, yet his scores suggest an improvement. I think everyone is different and you can't really put timescales on it. However, as far as coping strategies are concerned it's been a steep learning curve for us to go from seeing him every month or two, to seeing him every day or two. We try to keep a sense of humour through it. Whilst this may seem harsh, if we didn't we'd just cry. We take each day as it comes and take comfort in the fact that we can help him, as far as possible, to enjoy his life. He also adores my two children, aged 7 and 2, and they are both brilliant at dealing with him. I hope you get some better answers than mine. ↲Love sal x