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Much of what has been said about nursing homes is relevant also to residential home care. Many people with dementia who live on their own may well need to go into residential care when they can no longer be maintained in their own home, despite the fullest use of community services. This will often happen well before the stage at which they need nursing care, and the choice will usually be between the social services welfare home, or ‘Part III accommodation’, and a private residential home. The local authority will levy a charge on the demented person’s … Continue Reading

For many people, guilt is the most destructive of all the emotions aroused by caring for a person with dementia. It can undermine the carer’s self-esteem and can arise, initially, as a consequence of choosing a course of action deemed best for the sufferer. On the one hand the family may decide to have an elderly parent living with them, so that they can care for him or her; on the other they may decide that the sufferer would be best looked after in a hospital or a home. In each situation the carers will believe that … Continue Reading

It can be very difficult to choose a new general practitioner, either because you have moved into a new area or decided to part company with the practice with which you are currently registered. Ask friends and neighbours who their doctor is and where the surgery is located. Ask them how they get on with their doctor and what they see as the strengths and weaknesses of the doctors they know. If possible, try to make contact with other people caring for a person with dementia and see whether their doctor has the qualities that you think … Continue Reading

Loss of brain tissue — atrophy of the brain substance – leads to a progressive shrinkage of the brain as the disease advances. Viewed externally, the brain therefore looks smaller and the spaces or sulci between the ridges, gyri, become bigger. Internally, the hollow spaces within the brain enlarge; the brain from a person with Alzheimer’s disease weighs less than normal. The degree of wasting is most marked in younger patients; in many older people with the disease the brain can appear very similar to that of a non-demented elderly person. The shape and degree of wasting … Continue Reading

As has been mentioned already, nerve fibres connect with parts of other nerve cells. The message travels down the nerve fibre using a process that is often likened to an electrical current flowing down a wire. This is a convenient way of thinking about it, and although it isn’t quite right, for our purposes it is a useful analogy. When it gets to the end of the nerve fibre the message has to ’switch on’ the next nerve cell or one of its dendrites, and there is a special system to make this possible.

Although … Continue Reading