Hi,
Looking for some empathy.
Mom has been diagnosed with AD and with spread the the front of her brain (based on in depth cognitive testing). She refuses to have a brain scan because she doesn't believe she is ill so doesn't need any investigation.
She has recently been seen by the memory clinic who seem to base their whole world around the results of mini mental state test. Mom has been scoring about 26 or 27 e.g not that bad.
Mom had a full set of cognitive tests which actually showed all of her skills are very impaired or very severely impaired compared to a pre-morbid estimate and that her condition is already quite advanced.
In reality, if left to her own devices she doesn't eat, drink, do any personal care, she can't initiate tasks eg pick up the phone, make a meal, dress/undress, remember to take her drugs etc. Due to her lack of food, even with supplements her weight is going down week on week. BMI is about 17 now.
She is on the surface, lucid and knows who you are and what is going on but her reasoning about her health and self awareness of her condition is virtually nil.
First symptom onset was probably 5 years ago. She regularly chokes on her evening meal even on a soft diet. She now has carers twice a day to help remind her to do activities of daily living but she often won't allow them to help because she thinks she doesn't need help or that she has already done the tasks herself or will do them later.
Her memory symptoms have only really been in the last 9 months.
My irritation has been that I'm trying to get my mom to accept a bit of help in the last 3 months and convince her that she should keep on having carers and accepting help with personal care only for some person to come in and administer a basic MMSE test and decree that her memory isn't that bad anyway. Mom then interprets this as "I'm fine and I don't want all of this fuss, this person says I'm not that bad anyway and I'd be OK if you all just left me alone"
There seems to be a bit of a lack of understanding of presentations of dementia that don't centre around being forgetful and being disorientated.
Has anyone else had this?
Looking for some empathy.
Mom has been diagnosed with AD and with spread the the front of her brain (based on in depth cognitive testing). She refuses to have a brain scan because she doesn't believe she is ill so doesn't need any investigation.
She has recently been seen by the memory clinic who seem to base their whole world around the results of mini mental state test. Mom has been scoring about 26 or 27 e.g not that bad.
Mom had a full set of cognitive tests which actually showed all of her skills are very impaired or very severely impaired compared to a pre-morbid estimate and that her condition is already quite advanced.
In reality, if left to her own devices she doesn't eat, drink, do any personal care, she can't initiate tasks eg pick up the phone, make a meal, dress/undress, remember to take her drugs etc. Due to her lack of food, even with supplements her weight is going down week on week. BMI is about 17 now.
She is on the surface, lucid and knows who you are and what is going on but her reasoning about her health and self awareness of her condition is virtually nil.
First symptom onset was probably 5 years ago. She regularly chokes on her evening meal even on a soft diet. She now has carers twice a day to help remind her to do activities of daily living but she often won't allow them to help because she thinks she doesn't need help or that she has already done the tasks herself or will do them later.
Her memory symptoms have only really been in the last 9 months.
My irritation has been that I'm trying to get my mom to accept a bit of help in the last 3 months and convince her that she should keep on having carers and accepting help with personal care only for some person to come in and administer a basic MMSE test and decree that her memory isn't that bad anyway. Mom then interprets this as "I'm fine and I don't want all of this fuss, this person says I'm not that bad anyway and I'd be OK if you all just left me alone"
There seems to be a bit of a lack of understanding of presentations of dementia that don't centre around being forgetful and being disorientated.
Has anyone else had this?