WHAT ARE THE DANGERS OF LAST-STAGE ALZEIMER'S?

In the late stage of Alzheimer's disease, unfortunately that person has probably now had a severe problem with their memory. They might forget or not recognise who a family member is or might not even recognise themselves when they look in their mirror. As a consequence of that, they become belligerent or maybe combative and agitated, and may even have some striking out behaviour. That same individual might now be wetting the bed or become, aside from being incontinent of say, just urine, might also become incontinent of faeces as well. By the way, combativeness and incontinence are the main reasons for which people oftentimes end up in a long-term care setting. So, in other words, a skilled nursing facility oftentimes is a requisite for somebody that is now having some of these really bad behaviours that most caregivers would not be able to help out with. Now, remember, prior to this point, the caregiver might have become involved in a minute way. In the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, a caregiver might spend maybe one hour or two hours out of their day with that individual and helping them out. In the middle stages, that might now become a longer job, because it really does become, say four hours or eight hours. In the late stages it's now becoming a full-time job where that individual requires full supervision. They can't really fend for themselves. They can't feed themselves, they can't toilet, they can't, again, get dressed and groom themselves in an appropriate fashion. So, now someone has to oversee all of those things. Memory has probably has become so severe where oftentimes an individual is in a state in which they're aware of who they are sometimes, but wouldn't be aware of say, the date, the place, where they're at, and so on. Oftentimes now the biggest challenge, clinically, is the behavioural manifestations that pop up in the late stages. An individual might now lose their ability to communicate fully; they might just groan, might not be able to ambulate anymore, or walk, get up, or otherwise. Literally, in the late stage of this illness, the body becomes so weakened that often times lower respiratory infections, say pneumonia, will often times do in the individual and they will die. So literally, this is an illness that kills people, and again, pushes them back into infancy and then lays them bare until their body all of a sudden becomes so weak and frail that they do die.

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