Caring For A Loved One With Alzheimer

Alzheimer’s disease can affect anyone more so in seniors 60 and over. Sometimes the family has to learn and change their life style in order to adjust and make your loved one comfortable. Be patient and just take things day by day. One day at a time is the moral behind this story, since all you can do is stay in control and help those you love.

In the beginning, Alzheimer’s disease can affect everyone in many different ways. Your loved one may slowly lose their memory, which as dementia progresses it may change the personality. The loved one may drift in and out of time by remembering long-term items and forgetting the short-term ones. This memory loss will and may affect the caregiver in different ways as well. The loved one may live in his or her home and at the same time not realizing where they are.

Driving somewhere can be a challenge to the person who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The short trip from their home to town that they may have drove a thousand times could take them three times longer than normal. The memory is lost. The mind works in a much different way; turning them around, right may mean left in their minds.

Remember things that happened ten years ago is sometimes easier than what they heard ten minutes before hand. Alzheimer’s patients have a hard time remembering short-term memories. The long-term memories are implanted in their minds but short term comes and goes just as fast.

Alzheimer’s can affect people in many different ways and memory loss is not the only thing that affects them. Besides memory loss, they might have a hard time with personal hygiene for instance. When taking a bath with or without assistance they could be easily frightened. Sometimes the patient will think the water is not good for their skin; it can frighten them to the point that they think they are drowning. The action may lead an expert to believe that OCD is present, yet it is merely a condition of the disorder. (OCD: People tend to think that they are plagued by disease and will reluctantly adhere to normal actions, such as taking out the trash, believing it can cause disease) Water is a freighting thing and this is something that the progressive condition known as dementia causes.

Dementia and Alzheimer’s are both related to an extent and both are related to the Alzheimer’s disease. Usually when an Alzheimer’s patient has one disorder, they will have the other, since Alzheimer’s disease develops into dementia.

Your loved one may feel angry with the caregiver, failing to realize what is happening. Sometimes the loved one gets mad at the caregiver and not someone else because they are together more. The caregiver is the mean person in patient’s life because they are the one trying to do what needs to be done, and the patient does not want to do these things.

Dementia and its symptoms can play a big role in the life of someone who has been affected with Alzheimer’s disease. There are many medications out now to help treat the condition and help make life a little easier for these patients. Don’t expect a cure for them because there is none at present, since the disease is brought on by aging.

Alzheimer's patients will sink into their own little world eventually as time progresses. They might stop eating, become incontinent, refuse medication; thinking it is poison.

When you are caring for a loved one, it is so hard and depressing to sit and watch them slip back in time and into their own little world, sometimes into their childhood days.

Just hang in there and be patient, giving them all the love and joy you can to make them comfortable