I've noticed a pattern with mum, who is in the later stages of Alzheimer's.
As well as her period of confusion and upset between roughly 4pm and 6pm, her ability to make sense of her surroundings and grasp on reality and general mood seem to fall off a cliff around 10 - 15 minutes after eating a meal.
She is eating less, but can still swallow. On good days she can manage to use a spoon, but most days she needs at least a little help to get food on the spoon, get the spoon to her mouth and keep the food in the dish. She also always wears an apron when eating.
I've wondered about giving her a small dose of Gaviscon or Buscopan after every meal, as I suspect she must get some sort of indigestion, or pain.
Her GP estimated we're coming to the last few months of her life and we've noticed she is sleeping a lot during the day and getting generally weaker. The tricky thing is that so many 'end of life' symptoms are so over-familiar with people looking after their PWD that it's hard to know what's the 'beginning of the end' and what's 'just another day'.
Getting her to drink is also a problem. She absolutely loves strong coffee, mocha and hot chocolate - which is great because she will definitely drink all of those things, but I know they can exacerbate UTIs and she's a regular UTI-er too!
So my question is: is the sudden fatigue and confusion a typical Alzheimer's thing, linked to just the effort at this stage of digesting food; or is it something I need to flag up to her GP as it could indicate something underlying that is non-Alzheimer's related?
As well as her period of confusion and upset between roughly 4pm and 6pm, her ability to make sense of her surroundings and grasp on reality and general mood seem to fall off a cliff around 10 - 15 minutes after eating a meal.
She is eating less, but can still swallow. On good days she can manage to use a spoon, but most days she needs at least a little help to get food on the spoon, get the spoon to her mouth and keep the food in the dish. She also always wears an apron when eating.
I've wondered about giving her a small dose of Gaviscon or Buscopan after every meal, as I suspect she must get some sort of indigestion, or pain.
Her GP estimated we're coming to the last few months of her life and we've noticed she is sleeping a lot during the day and getting generally weaker. The tricky thing is that so many 'end of life' symptoms are so over-familiar with people looking after their PWD that it's hard to know what's the 'beginning of the end' and what's 'just another day'.
Getting her to drink is also a problem. She absolutely loves strong coffee, mocha and hot chocolate - which is great because she will definitely drink all of those things, but I know they can exacerbate UTIs and she's a regular UTI-er too!
So my question is: is the sudden fatigue and confusion a typical Alzheimer's thing, linked to just the effort at this stage of digesting food; or is it something I need to flag up to her GP as it could indicate something underlying that is non-Alzheimer's related?
