to be terrified of dementia

[calmseeker]

I am in my mid fifties and my short term memory has deteriorated. Sometimes, possibly like people of my age I go to get something in another room and think 'what was it I wanted?' or I open the fridge instead or a cupboard then realise what I've done. I look it up and the internet (reliable sites) say its a normal part of aging. But every other day there seems to be 'new' things that predispose one to dementia - antihistamines (older versions), concussion, lack of sleep, solitariness and so the list goes on, Is anybody else terrified........ The worse thing is there is no cure and the disease is very scary.....

my money is on exercise as the best bet for long term brain health

with diet a close second, although it's harder to know exactly what constitutes the optimal diet

Please make sure you do a "lasting power of attorney" my parents made such a big thing of making wills etc but no provision for losing his mind.

Some really good answers/ suggestions from everyone since I last posted.

Sooty your mum and mine seem to be in the same boat. My mum was quite aggressive when she first went to the home and bit a staff member on one occasion and pushed a resident on a couple of others. Thank god she calmed down a bit after that. All the homes in my area are very similar. No one is better than other. There's some lovely dedicated women and others who you feel are there just because they need to be and tbh it's not a career choice I would choose. So, I do give the staff lots of credit for a very hard job that they do. Mum is always clean and tidy when I see her and is no longer distressed. Recognises me still but seems to be sleeping away her days.

It was good we had the power of attorney . My aunt didn't and as she was childless I had to register thru the court of protection as her deputy. This process cost somewhere in the region of £2 k if I remember correctly and believe me you don't want to go there. Every year you have to fill in a detailed financial report, keep all receipts down to a pair of knickers and then pay a fee of about £350 per year for the privilege of being stressed to high heaven. Then when they die everything is frozen and you can no longer ie the person who has been trusted , pay any bills apart from funeral. I had to do this for five years plus all the stress of caring for them, visiting them , visiting them in hospital etc. I was wrung out. Still am some days. Meanwhile you grapple every day with bits and pieces you forget yourself.

When someone you love goes down the Alzheimer's route, they pay, and pay and pay again.

We've just had the stress of filling in the probate forms . There's another £230 . We had made a mistake on the form and they hadn't noticed it. What are we paying all this money for? The loved one gets the stress and hard work on top of an already stressful life. My daughter has poa for her gran and I feel guilty for her having that dumped on her shoulders and we are both executors for my aunt, another syressful job. Honestly , you are best dying penniless because its money, money all the way.

Live for now. Have a blast. That's my motto.

That's What happens if no one takes the 'deputy role' Dowser ? There must be people with no next of kin at all.

I ask because my dsis doesn't care for her health and has no dcs . She may well end up in a home with Alz.

ppeat I am a social worker for older adults. If an individual has no one, then their local authority will take on deputyship. We can also manage their benefits (if they are receiving any) from the DWP and this is called appointeeship.

It's really important to make your wishes known about what happen to you when you die as well as while you are living. I am currently arranging a funeral for a service user who passed away and has not a single friend or family member in the world. I see a lot of sad and painful things in my job but this has been one of the hardest emotionally. It is even more sad because she never made her wishes known, so we've had to decide if she'll be buried or cremated. :(

Dowser, we also have the nightmare of deputyship, it cost £2,600 to apply and now the ongoing costs not forgetting the 'security bond'. My gran kept going to the (unscrupulous) solicitors & changing her will at various stages of her illness then destroying the originals of some & leaving others in place - no-one knows which one is kosher any more so there will be a big furore about that eventually.

The problem with thinking you will nip off to Dignitas when you get dementia is that a very common symptom is complete denial, where the sufferer just refuses to believe there is anything wrong at all. People with dementia will swear black is white even when faced with undeniable evidence to the contrary. They will confabulate and make things up to explain things away that do not suit them, you cannot get them to see 'reason' as they have lost the ability to reason. Even if they, briefly, have a flash of insight (really upsetting as they are then terrified by what is happening) they lose it just as quickly. They cling on to life with a grimness that is impossible to understand.

My grandmother's experience may not be of statistical importance but it's still valid and worth knowing about. She did everything right with regards to taking care of her body, she still has dementia.

Would it not be possible to make provision in advance for dementia?
To specify a certain level of decline or dysfunction at which you wish to vacate your body?

If we are actually overwhelmed with cases of dementia, if an 'epidemic' causes an intolerable burden on society, like some kind of plague of elderly zombies then surely we would have to do something like that?

(please excuse my hyperbole!)?

Sorry to hear that uptown flunk and it seems like the price has gone up since I had to apply.

I was happy to do it for my aunt , don't get me wrong, she was my god mother and I loved her to bits...it was just when all this officialdom stepped in. It was almost like another tax, £350 a year because you can't manage your own affairs.

As wayfarer says, the LA step in if no one is willing to do it. It will be just a job for them . Where if I needed tobuy anything for my aunts house etc I also looked for value for money etc.

Thanks a lot wayfaringstranger Very good advice

That's really sad WS

How do people manage to live without making any connections.

Thank you Dowser I think that the price depends on the solicitors you use as well as the value of the estate etc. I know what you mean about spending someone's money wisely, I try to shop for my gran in the way she would have shopped for herself - getting value for money for her and not just buying what is convenient for me. I've just had to clear her house and make decisions about everything inside it. It's a lot of responsibility but, hey, I love her.

Suzanne making decisions in advance would be the best idea and hopefully that is what will happen in the future. The trouble with my gran's generation is that a lot of them are/were a bit funny about making ordinary wills let alone making living wills. It's like by saying something might happen you are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that it will happen. It's actually quite hard to hand over responsibility to other people as well even if you recognise that it's sensible to do so, it gives them a lot of power, which can be a frightening prospect.

Wayfaring you sound lovely. We had a lot of problems with SS - mainly because my gran was so difficult & resistant to care - but I am thankful that there are genuinely good people out there trying to do there best for people who have no-one else.

That should read 'their best' not 'there best'.