A question about what the first signs of Alzheimer's are.

[rosedream]

If you are close to someone effected by Alzheimer's, looking back were there any signs that you now think were the first signs but didn't realise at the time ?

I'm concerned about my MIL.

She's not how she used to be. Starting to take things literally

Sometimes very emotional then another time lacking in it.

Likes weekly routine to stay the same. Stopped socialising.

Really out of sorts if taken somewhere unfamiliar such as an extended family member birthday meal.

I'm just concerned and trying to help , what little she'll let me.

Repeating conversations, being a bit confused when going out, especially to unfamiliar places and just being more sort of "stressy" in general.

One of the first signs shown by our neighbour was getting confused with money, not recognising the various coins.

With my MIL we first noticed that she’d get disorientated easily, we could be in her chosen supermarket and she will suddenly look lost and ask where she was. Or she’ll visit friends and forget which house is theres. Her moods change really quick too and she’s very vocal about it, a few years ago she’d never be loud or rude in public. Get her seen by a doctor, it’s a long and hard process. Good luck OP, it’s lovely you care and want to help.

With my Grandmother it was when she stopped going out. We didn't realise it at the time but now, looking back we can see that going out became increasingly difficult for her and she'd gone from whizzing around the supermarket to sitting in the car to not wanting to go anywhere at all.

The things you mention certainly could be symptoms of dementia. If your MIL won’t accept help it makes it a lot harder. My mum has dementia . Her first symptoms were that she was confused in unfamiliar surroundings, didn’t want to go out anywhere, became forgetful, repeated herself. My mum was very much in denial that there was a problem and got quite cross when people mentioned it. My dad noticed first and mentioned it to me, but, he didn’t want to upset her and so went along with her wishes and didn’t press her to see her GP. .

Eventually about 2 years later my dad had to stop driving and I had to take mom to medical appointments so I managed to get her into GP, we had a referral to Memory Assessment Clinic and my mum was given medication and attended some therapy days. I think it would have been more beneficial to her if she had accepted this support earlier on.

But back to symptoms - my dad was also diagnosed with dementia a year later and because his symptoms were completely different to my mum I hadn’t recognised it. Mum became unable to organise herself or complete household tasks, yet this wasn’t a problem for my dad until much later. He became confused about who people were, yet, even today, around 6 years since she initially started to have problems, my mum still knows who I am.

My MIL's early signs included an inability to cope with large groups of people, even ones she'd known for years: she started avoiding family get-togethers. Her organisational abilities also went through the floor - she'd have people round, have some food ready, and would have forgotten all about a plates and cutlery.

It's a bugger, dementia. Slowly sucks away the person that you knew.

Your description certainly sounds like early stage dementia.

The subtle signs tend to be difficulty with social situations, failure to read body language, social cues etc. Forgetting social niceties. Emotional, mood swings, stress.

Misplacing things, word finding difficulties, difficulty sequencing common Tasha, forgetfulness etc tend to be slightly l later.

My dad started to lose his train of thought when he was talking, then he started to lose his sense of direction and get confused about where he was.
He has early onset Alzheimer’s, but it took almost 2 years of small symptoms before we realised something was wrong.

My dad repeating the same things over and over become the norm but we didn't think about dementia just him getting old. Then he started getting lost and disorientated in familiar places.He went to the top of his road to post a letter, literally two minutes from the house and he kept walking and walking. An hour later he "came to" and he managed to phone for help. Still dementia didn't cross our mind because the episodes were far apart over the course of maybe eighteen months. Then in Jan 2017 we put the clues together and realised there was actually a problem but it took until the summer to get him to see his GP.

I noticed several relatives (who were later diagnosed with dementia) started writing cards & addresses oddly. They'd write the message on the left side instead of the facing side, all bunched up at the top or bottom, and the address in an odd layout/position or wrong order.
Postcodes on the wrong line, address not in the centre left of the envelope etc., when they had always written it in the standard format previously.
This could be a coincidence, but it seems like a sign of early dementia to me.

Just t o point out that Alzheimer's is just one type of dementia whilst all forms are loss of memory how they affect people can present differently if you think your Mil has dementia she needs assessment will she go to The Gp? They can refer her to the memory clinic etc.

How old is your MIL? It's always worth checking if they have a Urinary Tract Infection first before assessing for Alzheimer's.

Hi op, I've lost both of my dgm's to Alzheimer's. The most recent was only 2 weeks ago, I was a carer for them both.

Looking back, the early signs were repeating themselves constantly, mixing up names of family members so I would be called the name of one of my cousins for example.

Also, disorientation. My dgm who passed away a few weeks ago was a driver ( though not for the last five years ) and she would
drive to the local shops and end up 20 miles away after getting lost.

The Alzheimer's society is an excellent source of information.
It is recognised that there are 5/7 stages and the first stage can last years. It's only at the middle to end stages that the person is virtually unrecognisable in terms of personality.

There are several medications for Alzheimer's/dementia that massively help but are seemingly only effective if started early on in the process. Both of my dgm's tried Aricept but it made them worse.

First port of call is the GP. They tend to ask a few questions such as "what is your date of birth? What year is it? Etc and then refer on to the memory clinic.
If there is any doubt then please consider taking her. My family were in denial initially and it was me that forced the issue .

It's the cruellest illness.

Thanks everyone for your comments. They have been so helpful and interesting.

My friend's Dh was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in his 60s. He began to have a problem with numbers. His friends contacted her about him confusing golf scores. He couldn't make sense of the Radio Times. Then he forgot the names of everyday items. 'That thing you put milk in' instead of 'jug'. When she first took him to the GP - on the pretence of perhaps needing some extra vitamins - she was shocked to find out he didn't know which season it was.

With my mother, who had vascular dementia, she couldn't remember what she'd had for lunch, so every day when I phoned her it was 'boil in the bag cod with parsley sauce'. Her neighbours occasionally helped out with shopping. Every time they asked her, she'd say 4 toilet rolls. There was a cupboard full of toilet rolls, but they'd never been asked to buy cod with parsley sauce.

So sorry, Op. My mother's personality never changed, but my friend's DH became very fearful. He was terrified by seeing himself in the mirror. He thought a stranger was standing behind him. It's a dreadful disease.

Uncharacteristic anxiety when previously relaxed & confident. At some level they know they aren't tracking the world very well, and find it upsetting.

My nan repeated conversations, particularly about things that were stressing her out, so we spent literally a whole day discussing the boiler man repair man coming over and over again, (admittedly that wasn't one of the first signs). I think initially when we first thought something was wrong she had started to be more introverted, quieter, less confident. she then started falling over and we knew there was a problem (she wasn't that old and died when she was 76 after quite a long battle with Alzheimer's and dementia).

I have power of attorney for my aunt, who has Alzheimer’s (she’s only 75). She lives with my uncle who she sometimes thinks has been replaced with an exact replica! Capgras delusion I believe.
Looking back she’s had symptoms for years. I would meet her for coffee and sometimes she had already bought and drunk hers when I got there. Then wanted to leave after about ten minutes. She made odd statements about people and seemed a bit paranoid. She would tell me stories from her childhood but say the same thing every time we met. Confused over money and her mobile phone (which she could use fine before). She would complain about my very elderly grandmother ‘spending all her money on makeup’ - my gran was bedridden in a home at this point.
Her current state is medicated (she was put on anti psychotics due to aggression towards my uncle) and more confused in a calmer way. She didn’t even register when her mother died recently. She still smokes which is a concern, i suspect it will be a stroke which kills her; she wouldn’t have wanted to be like this - she used to be a very firm head teacher !

Oh and clothes- my aunt would be wearing the same grubby thick coat for years, in all seasons. She still wears it now

My fil was diagnosed with altzheimers early this year. For us, the first things we noticed was him getting very stressed about minor things - ridiculously so, and getting very hung up about one small thing for weeks (and constantly going on about it), then moving on to another small thing. Things like a broken clock or a trip to the seaside. Endless repeated questions/the same conversation over and over again. Of course him memory wasn't too good, but at the time we considered it par for the course, considering he's in his 90s.
It's funny, because looking back you realise all the clues were there, but because they happen intemittently, you only string them together later. I noticed that he would no longer initiate a conversation. If you didn't speak he would just sit in silence. He stopped reading and couldn't follow a tv programme with a storyline (still okay with sport though). He became unable to take pills, even when they were in a dosette box. He forgot how to use the washing machine. That, in fact, was my moment of revelation, because he was wearing a pair of dirty trousers one day - a man who was so clean and proud he would never have normally done that. All the tests were done (took months) and he is now on altzheimers medication, but I think it's too little too late. He is deteriorating rapidly, has carers and us visiting, but it is only a matter of time before his brain goes completely. He is often very distressed for no apparent reason, and can't take any change in schedule at all. It is very sad, and I hope something else takes him off before he becomes a shell.

This may seem a weird question but -

did any of the dementia sufferers report increased amounts of very vivid deja vu episodes prior to other evident symptoms?

Not deja vu as such, but my fil a couple of years ago was remembering stuff vividly from his past that he hadn't thought about for years. He was quite surprised about it. He also suffered from really frightening nightmares for some time, but that's all gone now. Perhaps it's the brain's last stand, so to speak.

If you have any suspicions that a family member is developing any form of dementia, I recommend putting in place Power of Attorney asap - definitely BEFORE diagnosis. You may never need it, but you can't arrange it after diagnosis except at great expense (and time) - because the person it's for has to sign their agreement (they basically sign to give you the 'power').

Both PILs have/had dementia. One of the earliest symptoms is losing the ability to plan. MIL would write a shopping list consisting of 'chocolate, sweets, frozen broccoli' - when she had 5 opened bags of frozen broccoli in the freezer! (See also the example above re loo rolls and cod in parsley - so typical!)

FIL had vascular dementia and we learned (too late) that a shuffling gait is often an early indicator, which he had, and this was commented on when he received his formal diagnosis.

FIL also used to say he was getting confused because 'too many people are talking' or 'there's too much going on, I can't concentrate' even in a small group, when there was nothing out of the ordinary happening. He was obviously struggling to keep up / processing conversations.

It's a cruel disease which robs everyone involved.

That's interesting about vascular dementia and the shuffling gait. Looks like another symptom that my father had which I completely missed.

I do know that there are different areas in the brain which influence different aspects of your personality and functioning and depending on which area the cells are dying in will show different symptoms. It may also be different depending on the type of dementia you have; as I say my parents had different symptoms but also had different types of dementia.

@zaphodsotherhead Deja vu is most commonly associated with temporal lobe epilepsy (I know this as I have it) but I understand it can also be associated with vascular dementia.