Hi muttimuggle you mentioned mixed dementia could you tell me what that means please. my husband was diagnosed with aphasia and mild cognitive impairment. but my doctor says their is no meds to slow down either of these conditions but while reading other posts it seems other types of dementia can take meds such as donepezil, also what is the difference of alzheimers and vascular dementia, and congnitive impairement, I want to do the best for my hubby but they seem reluctant to give him anything. Any advice greatly appreciated
Hi Hybiscus. Cognitive impairment means, I think I understand correctly- brain has lost some of its functions, (or cogs!) is not performing up to scratch. You get that diagnosis (just) when they haven't got that bad yet - maybe the memory test given gets a lower score than it should but is not too bad yet OR you might get that diagnosis when Vascular Dementia is suspected. This one is far harder to pin down to the diagnosis and it might be what you or others notice and report to the GP which then might get looked into further. Having said all that - all forms of dementia are signs of cognitive impairment.
So in my Mum's case she has a few venous problems, poor circulation, an irregular and slow heart beat and on a few countable occasions she suffered sort of dizzy turns which went on a little while - she described them as a feeling of "tumbling" or " falling sideways into the wall". These resulted in several visits to A&E. Generally nothing conclusive was found but it was then assumed that she had been suffering mini strokes - which cause vascular dementia when those little blood clots kill off areas in the brain. She was put on the drug Edoxobahn which is a newer blood thinner to prevent it continuing to happen. As I understand the symptoms of Vascular Dementia can actually vary from person to person depending upon what area or areas of the brain have been killed. And for my Mum it was subtle at first - but very noticeable to me. I remember correctly that when she was in hospital following one of these funny turns they did a brain scan to look for evidence. Although they reported that they could not see evidence of a recent stroke, I think I remember the doctor saying that there was evidence of brain cell death(?) and I think I remember him saying that this(then) was mostly affecting the frontal lobes. This would fit so perfectly with the subtle personality changes I saw in Mum and which have increased. The frontal lobes deal with emotion and the feeling of empathy. She was becoming unsurprised by things, unable to put herself in others' shoes, a little more tactless and showing a tendency to make inappropriate comments. Well all this and muddliness. Over time her loss of finding the right word also increased as did her understanding of what is being said to her- even when I talked slowly. She lost the ability to evaluate what was said and come to her own sensible conclusions ( hard for me to explain this latter bit). Her ability to read and comprehend deteriorated too.
The Alzheimer's is far more recognisable I would say - It is evident when people can't remember what has been done or said recently so a tendency to keep repeating things because they thought they hadn't already told you/ done it. My Uncle's wife has clearly got Alzheimer's but she, as yet, remains quite eloquent and she reads. You can have a conversation with her as long as you don't mind hearing one or two tales several times only.
There are other types of Dementia too which others on this site will be more familiar with and could potentially explain from their experience. The sad and frustrating thing was the lack of diagnosis all those years for the Vascular Dementia. Those personality changes in a loved one are really hard to deal with. Even when she got the Mixed Dementia diagnosis a couple of months ago Alzheimer's is the only obvious one to spring out clearly. Because of my mothers inappropriate answers to questions asked by the consultant she got this mixed dementia diagnosis which is"most usually Alzheimer's + Vascular in elderly people". My mother is 90.Good luck with your quest to find and do the best for your husband.