Hi
I'm new here and a little scared, but I wanted to ask a lot of questions and get some advice. Hope that's okay?
My 80 year old Grandma has recently been diagnosed. The memory team assessed her and she came out with a score of 76/100 (is this good, bad, normal - I don't know?). She then went for hospital tests, and then the memory team came back to tell her it was Alzheimer's. They are going to prescribe her donepezil, is this effective at slowing the process? I looked it up online and it says it might only slow it for 6months (that seems unbearably short).
I'm finding it incredibly difficult to get my head round this. She's my last grandparent, she's clever and funny, and my most hilarious friend. I've tried to tell her not to think about it, and she even joked something else will kill her before the Alzheimer's takes hold anyway. Like how fast does this even progress?
I think I'm still in disbelief. I'm sure they don't get diagnosis wrong, but I don't want to believe that this will happen to her. When the memory team came to give her the results she could even still remember the questions and answers from the memory test two months earlier! Before the test I had not even noticed her as forgetting anything, she's always so sharp.
So many people are in the same situation and yet I still feel like it's unbearably unfair, I'm almost inconsolable. Should I not think so far into the future?
If anyone has any advice I'd be most grateful, even if it's just to tell me to suck it up! Like what can I do to make this better for Nan, what can I expect etc?
Thanks
I'm new here and a little scared, but I wanted to ask a lot of questions and get some advice. Hope that's okay?
My 80 year old Grandma has recently been diagnosed. The memory team assessed her and she came out with a score of 76/100 (is this good, bad, normal - I don't know?). She then went for hospital tests, and then the memory team came back to tell her it was Alzheimer's. They are going to prescribe her donepezil, is this effective at slowing the process? I looked it up online and it says it might only slow it for 6months (that seems unbearably short).
I'm finding it incredibly difficult to get my head round this. She's my last grandparent, she's clever and funny, and my most hilarious friend. I've tried to tell her not to think about it, and she even joked something else will kill her before the Alzheimer's takes hold anyway. Like how fast does this even progress?
I think I'm still in disbelief. I'm sure they don't get diagnosis wrong, but I don't want to believe that this will happen to her. When the memory team came to give her the results she could even still remember the questions and answers from the memory test two months earlier! Before the test I had not even noticed her as forgetting anything, she's always so sharp.
So many people are in the same situation and yet I still feel like it's unbearably unfair, I'm almost inconsolable. Should I not think so far into the future?
If anyone has any advice I'd be most grateful, even if it's just to tell me to suck it up! Like what can I do to make this better for Nan, what can I expect etc?
Thanks