Sad Alzheimers

The patient: an 80something year old male. He's had alzheimers for awhile, but his daughter and son in law brought him in urgently because he had an aggressive incident the evening before. During the visit, it was easy to see how confused he was. He would start a statement and not be able to finish it because he couldn't remember what he was saying. Dr. B was assessing how oriented he was. After asking the patient what state we were in, he couldn't answer. So Dr b gave him some choices. He correctly picked Colorado. Then Dr. B pointed to his son in law and asked who that was. He just looked at him blankly. After we asked several more times, he responds with "Well, that's a Colorado possum." We all busted out laughing. Definitely not what we were expecting. It was really really sad though. My grandpa had alzheimers and it was so sad talking to him. I don't hope this disease on anyone.

Oh and an interesting tidbit about the alzheimers medications. If you take a patient who has been on an alzheimers med, and discontinue the medication, the patient will rapidly progress to the point where they would have been without meds the entire time in a matter of months. So even though some of the side effects are vicious, many people will continue on them because of the ramifications of coming off.