Use Your Words: the Family Members Become Demented, and the Families are Having Troubles Communicating, Doctors Teach You How to Talk with Them

and nope, not my photograph…

Advice from the DOCTORS here, from the Front Page Sections, translated…

Early intervention is KEY to delaying the progression of dementia, but, based off of statistics, the elderly who had dementia usually get diagnosed eighteen months later compared to people who have dementia here.

The Alzheimer’s Foundation’s Asian Community Educational Center manager, Chang yesterday, pointed out on the international conferences that the Asian families have stereotypes toward Alzheimer’s Disease, believed that it is “dementia”, the elderly becoming senile, and would avoid the subject matter at all costs, or categorize the signs of the elderly as normal aging process.  She’d received an emergency call from the family members, “what do I do?  My mother no longer recognized me!”, at which time, the elderly already progressed into the severe stages of dementia, and the time for treatment measures to be effective had long passed already.

The director of the Taiwan Dementia Association, Dr. Chiu who is also the attending physician of NTU Hospital’s Neurology Department said, that the families of demented elderly often wouldn’t know how to get the family members to the hospitals to get treated, he’d suggested that before taking the elderly to the doctors, talk with the doctors, and sometimes, lying is necessary.  Chang said, that the elderly with dementia normally feel that s/he doesn’t need to be treated, the families can take the elderly to do something they enjoyed, and to the doctors on the same outing.

And, the finances and talking the demented elderly to stop driving are problems that surfaces during the communications too.  Chang suggests, that the finances should be planned out earlier on, suggested that while the patient was still in her/his earlier stages, can still use credit cards, and still remember the signatures used for the banking accounts, to start discussing the matter.

And so, these are the important matters of the day, and although early intervention can help slow down the progressions of dementia, there’s still NO cure for dementia, and so, we can only help our family members who are already showing signs, cope with their daily living, and be supportive of them, no matter what!

not my photograph here…