Reversal of cognitive decline: A novel therapeutic program, by Dale Bredesen

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It’s a shame Australia is so far away or we’d be on our way ASAP. How fantastic that there are approaches to arresting cognitive decline that don’t involve taking medication that often has a Black Box warning.

Kate Swaffer (she/her) Kaurna Country's avatarLiving Beyond Dementia™

This months Living Beyond Dementia™ blog (yes, only one again as I am too busy living beyond dementia), is on the following study (Abstract and Summary only included – follow the link to the full study),

Reversal of cognitive decline: A novel therapeutic program

Dale E. Bredesen1, 2
1 Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Disease Research, Department of Neurology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095;
2 Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, CA 94945.

Abstract

This report describes a novel, comprehensive, and personalized therapeutic program that is based on the underlying pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease, and which involves multiple modalities designed to achieve metabolic enhancement for neurodegeneration (MEND). The first 10 patients who have utilized this program include patients with memory loss associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI), or subjective cognitive impairment (SCI). Nine of the 10 displayed subjective or objective improvement in…

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Dementia: Thank Goodness For Gary Lineker

General,

This post was written last night and will be circulated on Sunday Morning:

I’m glad I’ve got Match of the Day to watch in half an hour.  Maureen has just denied me of my hat-trick as she wants the bed to herself as she is too hot to have me in beside her. Then just as she is getting ready for bed she tells me that there are men sitting in her car staring up at her.  Just to put her mind at rest I went outside to assure her that there was no-one in the car.  Unfortunately, she is still very unsettled as she believes that this has happened before and other people are using her car.  She says she needs the car for Paul to drive her around as her dad can’t drive.

I had intended to go to bed early tonight but I need time to settle myself after seeing Maureen so frightened: Lineker is the man for that.  Maureen hasn’t had a bad day but on occasions she has been sitting with a very worried look on her face.   I have delicately tried to get her to share her thoughts and she has said she has forgotten what she is thinking about.

I’m hoping that the referral to the Memory Service will lead to involvement with the Home Treatment Team:  when they were involved before I was impressed by their approach to dementia.  Their involvement might give Maureen an opportunity to open up to professional staff about how she is feeling.  That would be a preferable option to plying her with medication that would close down the areas of her brain that are already under attack from dementia.

Sunday 7 am continuation of this post:

I’m glad Match of the Day is repeated in half an hour’s time.  I nodded off early in the programme last night and I need Gary this morning.  The advice of ‘letting sleeping dogs lie’ has really hit home this morning. For the last hour or so Maureen has been trying to make sense of her memory loss.  It started with thinking of writing to her mum and it has ended with what have I been doing for the last 16 years.  The questions are coming thick and fast with all sorts of barbs thrown in and I have had to be at my best to keep my cool.

Maureen understands my addiction to football and may accept that I’m going downstairs to watch Premier League which is a relief after listening to the Sky Blues struggle yet again yesterday.  Gary will also give me a break from the repeated enquiries that lead nowhere as Maureen just can’t remember and is bemused.

I’m hoping that additional support from the Home Treatment Team will help us through the next stage of our journey. We have now hit a very rough passage as we try to figure out a way forward.

Dementia: New Problems With Using The Kettle

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I have had to keep my eye on Maureen’s use of the electric kettle for some time.  She often fills it and up leaves the lid open when she switches it on. This morning I smelled burning plastic when she put the kettle on a hot ring of the electric cooker. I managed to rescue the kettle just in time with only superficial damage to the plastic casing .  Maureen didn’t see anything wrong in what she had done, clearly remembering how she used to boil water in times gone by.

The need for vigilance is paramount if a serious incident is to be avoided in the future.  Leaving Maureen alone in the house is now very risky and has to be called into question.  Unfortunately, our Care Agency are struggling to put additional sits in place as they are short of staff.  This means that I’m going to be confined to quarters for four days a week for the forseeable future.  In the mean time I will need to keep my wits about me at all times to minimise the chances of a serious accident.  I think it is time to call in Occupational Therapy to see if we can make the house safer for someone who is forgetting the safest way to use various things in the house.  The Fire Brigade are already wanting to pay us a visit to minimise the risks of accidents in the home.

Dementia: The Bed’s Too Big Without You

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I think it safe to say I’ve put up a pretty good performance in bed the last couple of nights.  Just past my 70th birthday I’ve been rather pleased with how things have gone.  I seem to have worked out how to get things off to a good start: the first moves are important as we all know and I seem to have grasped the sort of thing that needs to follow.

Having spent several days establishing a place where men are not allowed, I now seemed to have found a route into Maureen’s bedroom.  Last night followed the ritual of the previous night: no questions asked I just carried on as we have done for years.   Once in bed I kept my distance and went with our normal ritual of ‘night, night sleep tight’.  If my memory serves me right I think I managed to get a perfunctory peck on the lips -have to take things steady at my age.  We were both extremely tired and dropped off as soon as our heads touched the pillow.  In the early hours of the morning I knew I was in the right place.

Maureen was out of bed looking out of the window, she said something along the lines of she didn’t know where she was and needed to know she was in her bedroom with Paul. Then it was: ‘tell me that’s where I am and I will be ok’. How fortunate that I was lying in bed and able to make the right noises to help minimise her confusion.  You can guess where I’ll be aiming to sleep from now on but like all of these occasions it will be  a question of ‘don’t call me, I’ll call you’.  Now where have I heard that before?

Postscript:  As I post this Maureen has gone off on walkabouts without telling me.  She nipped out when I thought she was in the back garden.  It’s time to put my ‘money where my mouth is’ and leave her to roam alone for a while.  If I go and find her straight away it will only confirm she is not safe to be out on her own and always needs a chaperone.  My plan is to bump into if her is she is not back within the hour.

Great news she’s just come back after walking around the block.  Who cares she’s in her slippers because there’s a smile on he face as she says she’s ‘not walking enough’.  I knew locking her in wasn’t the way forward!

 

 

Dementia: The Invisible Woman

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I have decided to integrate gratitude into my daily posts rather than make Saturday’s a ‘Small Sprinkle of Gratitude’.  I’m taking a leaf out of Jennifer Tucker’s blog with this approach to showing gratitude.

There is always so much to blog about but the bizarre events of yesterday take some beating.  I let Maureen sleep late after her performance of the night before.  I’m sure all great singers need to rest their vocal chords after being on stage for almost three hours.

 Gail or carer arrived on schedule and was off doing our weekly shop.  I decided to put my feet up and must have ‘bobbed off’, as they say round here.  When I came round all seemed quiet upstairs so I let ‘sleeping dogs lie’ for a while longer.  Around noon I went upstairs and couldn’t find Maureen and assumed she’d scarpered whilst I had been in the land of nod.  Gail returned heavily laden with shopping as I began to widen my search. I helped her unload her car and then sped off in ours to look for Maureen in her usual haunts. 

I spent about a quarter of an hour looking for Maureen around our neighbourhood..  A wider search revealed nothing so I returned home in a bit of a panic.  I was about to call the police when I decided to check upstairs once again and found Maureen asleep in bed.  There is only one word to describe what had happened: bizarre – as my search for her earlier couldn’t have been more thorough.

I have no idea what had happened.  When Maureen eventually woke I described that I had lost her; without learning anything new.  The interesting thing is that she went on to sleep for most of the remainder of the day: goodness knows what she had been up to in her ‘absence’.

Measures have already been undertaken to avoid the Invisible Woman getting up to her antics in the future’.  I have activated the alarm on the front door and keys will no longer be so conveniently kept in locks . That should put an end to her going missing or my panic attacks!  I’ve just remembered I need to update my Good Music page and there’s one number that simply has to go on there today.

I slept beside Maureen in bed again last night: ‘very interesting’ as my dear old dad would have said – more on that a little later.

Dementia: No More ‘Slap and Tickle’

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I made a silly mistake yesterday evening: I forgot Maureen had dementia.  She hadn’t been awake long from a rest on the sofa when I immediately started ‘fooling around’ – no not in that way at my age.  She had discarded an uncomfortable bra and left it on the floor. I made a passing reference to it not being my size.  In for a penny in for a pound; as she bent over I slapped her on the bum -both cheeks.  The reprimand was immediate: ‘don’t do that’, said very sternly.  What else could I expect her to say when a someone she probably didn’t recognise had smacked on the rear?  Then a short while afterwards came a very pointed comment as Maureen said ‘I haven’t forgotten everything you know’.  She went on to say that although she couldn’t remember what happened yesterday that her long term memory was good.  I did my best to reassure her that she was doing well, and all we needed to do was concentrate on enjoying our lives together.

Maureen’s reference to her poor short-term memory didn’t really take me by surprise.  On Dementia: on Sunday evening she said ‘I’ve lost my memory again’.  This is clearly a new stage in her recovery from stroke and a fresh challenge for yours truly.  It comes at a time when a referral back to the Memory Service is underway.  We are all going to have to be vigilant to make sure there is a productive outcome from the next stage of our journey.

Although ‘slap and tickle’ is out of the question, music isn’t and we had a lovely evening singing along for a couple of hours to some of our old favourites.  Every time I put another record on the deck Maureen said ‘you’ve got more’. I love to hear her singing along to Anne Murray.

Then it got even better.  I just slipped in beside her in the marital bed, and we slept together as if it was the most natural thing to do in the world.  I woke around 4 am with pain in lots of joints so I got up and moved around.  Fortunately the pain has gone now but not a burning question in my mind. I’m just wondering if by trying to resolve the problems with my shoulder I have spooked Maureen.  Perhaps it’s not sensible to leave her to her own devices while I trot off to the Leisure Centre.  I’m going to see if exercising at home helps to calm things down a little. Who knows what might happen next if we continue to sleep together?

 

Dementia: Sweet Dreams

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I’ve just had a lovely catch up sleep in the Girls Dormitory.  In my dreams I kept seeing this woman.  I’m sure I served her tea here yesterday.  I wonder if she’s asleep on the sofa?

Dementia: Great Teamwork

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It was far from easy to get Maureen to see a G P yesterday.  It required  teamwork to get her to the Medical Centre and achieve a good outcome.

Gail our carer played a blinder easing Maureen toward her appointment at noon.  While I tidied up my vegetable patch she persuaded Maureen to provide a sample that was needed to check for UTI.  All seemed well until we got to our Medical Centre when Maureen claimed she had only come to drop off her sample.  Gail came to my rescue as Maureen gave me the cold shoulder along with some verbal when the receptionist informed her she had an appointment to see a GP.

I took a back seat for a while and left the girls to it.  After a while I sat beside Maureen and asked her if she minded me coming in with her so I could get further advice on my shoulder.

Dr Sibtain was excellent with Maureen. He would have been awarded a badge for following the approach I Blogged about yesterday:

What is the Answer for Dementia Related Behaviors?

His message to us was quite simple ‘don’t dwell on issues, enjoy the good times and find nice things to do’.  How fortunate we are to have so many compassionate people helping us on our journey.  More team members have come into play today to help us on our journey.

Sue our social worker has encouraged an assessment by the Mental Health Team.  Dr Munjal has returned to work this morning and is referring Maureen back to the Memory Service for assessment.  They are both well aware of how carefully we have to tread because of Maureen’s ongoing fear that we are all conspiring to lock her away.

Dementia: News From The Night Shift

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When I was a machinist in the car industry I avoided night-shift like the plague. Fortunately, my mate on the opposite shift loved working night’s so I only ever did a total of a couple of months in my 8 year stint machining crankshafts.  Now I’m on duty 24/7 with an endless hours’ contract: when duty calls I have to deliver.

At around 1.30 this morning I heard Maureen on the move.  I joined her downstairs to find her looking out of the window.  She was concerned that the car was about to be stolen:  even my reassurance that it was quite safe made little difference.  She was convinced there were children and a dog in her vehicle.

Almost an hour later I’m hoping that she is bedded down on the sofa and this will allow me to be on standby for a few hours.  It’s unlikely I will risk going back to bed because if she could wake and panic because she is unsure where she is..  What I intend to do is tidy up for a while and then doze in an armchair close to the sofa.  I didn’t need to do that after all as Maureen decided that it was too cold to stay downstairs and went back to bed.  She’s been sleeping like a log for a couple of hours now.  A couple of hours later I went back to bed and have just woken after some more welcome rest

I hope to be able to talk things over with our G P today.  It is difficult to consider sleep after some of Maureen’s latest antics.  However, I need to develop a strategy to let events wash over me, as I do when she launches into a verbal attack. I need to take a leaf out of Maureen’s book and fall asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow.  If I don’t begin to do this soon I’m going to be in real trouble and that is something neither of us can afford.

Dementia: ‘Haven’t I Got A Sister ?’

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It’s 10 pm and I’m blogging to help me cope with the events of the last half an hour.  As Maureen completed her preparations to go to bed I heard her sobbing in the bathroom.  I went to console her and she said she ‘didn’t like sleeping by herself and haven’t I got a sister’.  It took me a while to settle her before she told me she wanted the bedroom to herself.  As I was about to close her bedroom door she said ‘who are you?’

I have no problem accepting that Maureen doesn’t know who I am at various times in the day.  My role is to minimise her distress and help her to feel safe.  However, I’m glad I’ll be able to watch a bit of footie on T V for a while as sleep doesn’t come easy when you see someone you love so upset.  It wouldn’t be so bad if I could do what comes naturally in such situations but any form of physical contact is risky when dementia is rampant with Maureen’s history.