My father has come down with Dimensia or possibly Alzhiemers? trying to find what disorder matches his symptom

Question

My dads short term memory is very bad, he gets confused and common sense is gone. he thinks he has millions and doesnt. he is trying to throw away everything in the house. He has no concept of the value of stuff. The other day he escaped the house and went to walk 7 miles to a toyota dealer to get a car (his wallet and keys have been taken away from him. This has all progressed within the past month. He spent 3 days in the hospital having every test done that could be done. The only thing they found out that was his B-12 was low and will need one shot a month for the rest of his life. he is 68. He also has high blood pressure. There is a 4 hour test that he is refusing to take because he says he's fine. The test would tell if he had Dimensia or early stages of Alzheimers. His brain is scrambling the short term memory loss and arranging it to make sense to him. He's two people but both are confused. Please help with links or possible disorder that match. Thnx. Marcus

Answer 1

Alzhiemers is a Dementia.
There are about 10 different dementias.

Alzhiemer sufferers have short term memory loss but remember clear as a bell things that happened 20 years ago.

Dementia patients do this also but do weird and odd things.

Answer 2

My mom started out this way and over the course of 10 years she had Alzheimers.I beleive that the two are the same,just Dementia is the start of the Alzeimers.They do have a semi new drug out that the doctors are using Aricept.It is very costly if you have no insurance but can apply for help with paying for it. Good Luck to you as this is very hard for the family to handle.My mom could remember things that happened in school but forgot who her five kids were.We are all grown adults but the pain of this is hard to take.I suggest if you can find a support group for the family members,this will help with dealing with this .God Bless you and your family

Answer 3

An easy examination you could do is the Mini-mental, though I've seen many patients screw that up just by elevating their relative's score either purposely or accidently. There are a few medications your doctor can prescribe if the score is below 24/30.

You should watch out for him and make sure he doesn't do anything dangerous (like driving, cooking or ironing). If you want, you can try looking up 'dementia' on Wikipedia for more information.

Answer 4

Alzheimers and dimensia are almost the same thing. the best way to deal with it and to get him to go along with the test is tell the doctor says it needs to be done also if he has someone that dear to him tell that that person says he needs to do it it will make him feel better. dimensia patiant can be hard but easy to. look it up on web md you will find all you need to know there. another thing you can do to is not tell him where your going let him figure it out after he gets in the office.

Answer 5

For all practical purposes, it doesn't really matter exactly what type of dementia he has. Alzheimer's is just treated the same as other dementias. He will need to be helped with daily living skills and have constant care to protect him (and possibly others). It's a sad, sad diagnosis.

Answer 6

India had a near perfect match after Australia's first innings batting,i thought it was good first innings from Aussies but India scored so fast thanks to Dhawan and co and Australia's second innings capitulation that happened so quickly on the last day cannot be explained even by Ian Chappell.Batting for India clicked so well in this series,they had a near perfect match.Australia should've drawn this match but they ended up losing on the last day thanks to some poor batting in second innings.

Answer 7

It could be either. I feel for you and what you must be going through. My aunt had been diagnosed with dimentia and she was paranoid because her eyesight was deteriorating fast. She imagined men on her deck and swore they were smoking cigars. Its a mind disorder and its sad to see them go in and out of reality. All you really could do, as far as I know, besides taking medicines for Alzheimer's, is to make sure they are with someone always and don't let them out of your sight. They could unintentionally hurt themselves.
God bless you.

Answer 8

Sounds like dementia to me. I have had lots of clinical experience with it. Medication can treat it, but to be honest with you it doesn't take it away. He will still act this way at moments, it is a progressive disease, it will only get worse. Best of luck to you, I have seen what this has done to families. My great aunt also had it.

Answer 9

http://www.alz.org/index.asp

Try that, and good luck.