Alzheimer’s – dementia or what has this Man Got?

Aug 26, 2009

When Mr. R left our home a couple of months ago that left three people in our facility that had either dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Two of those are confirmed cases, but one of them, let’s call him Mr. S we don’t know.

It’s not on his record as having either dementia or Alzheimer’s. However it is very obvious that he has one of them. It is not only obvious, but it is advanced and not in the early stages.

We think the responsible party; one of his children, is keeping the doctor from putting it on his record. That would be a tactic to try to save money since anyone diagnosed with either dementia, and especially Alzheimer’s is harder to care for and a lot more costly.

He has been here a few months and has gotten worse. His dementia, or whatever he has, is really pretty bad. His mood changes sometimes three or four times a day. One minute he is happy, the next he is totally the opposite – and for no good reason. Plus he has all the other signs of a person with medium to advanced Alzheimer’s would normally have.

Well for us there is no good reason for him to be so upset so very often. But I guess to him it is. Usually he gets really upset if we ask him to eat and for whatever reason he does not want to. If he were younger that would be no real problem, but he is almost 100 years old and is weak. He needs to eat or else he will be unable to walk.

As it is, he can barely get up out of the chair by himself. Frequently when I see him walking (the residents walk around the house twice a day for exercise) I think he will fall. He walks without a walker, but does have a cane.

He is bent over at almost a forty-five degree angle so it would be very easy for him to fall if he is not strong enough to support himself.

Mr. S has serious mood swings. It is made worse by what we think is his responsible party. I cannot go into this, but suffice it to say that virtually every time the responsible party takes him “out to lunch” or “to the doctor” he returns with a different mood or has a problem here that he didn’t have before.

Mr. S has the worse personality of anyone we have ever had. He doesn’t show in his records that he has Bipolar disease or anything that would cause his bad temper. Dementia or Alzheimer’s could do it and he has other major symptoms of those problems.