From the Neurologist’s Office, off of the Front Page Sections, translated…
The New Year’s coming, working in the giant tall white towers, I can’t help, but share some things with the rest, something I’d, discovered, around the holidays. Every year around the New Year’s, there would always be those who come in, to get treated for eating spoiled food items, with the patients, overflowing in and out of the clinics; the paramedics on high-alert, the children taking their elderly parents to the oncology, neurology departments.
This is actually, understandable, in modern day society, most children work far away from home, and only returned home on the major holidays, the special occasions, to gather with the whole family, for a reunion. Most of the year, they’d, relied on using the phone lines, or LINE, there are, rarely, any occasions, to see one’s own aging parents, at their, moments of need in health statuses.
For my clinic of Alzheimer’s, I’d often heard, “doctor, my mother had, stuffed the fridge with fish, but we’d never had fish! And now, she’d, bought thirty fish at a time, she’d, left them to get spoiled, and not done anything about them!” and, “Sir, my older brother had just, said goodbye to my mother, as I saw her the following day, she’d asked me, why he hadn’t, come back to see her, something must be, wrong with her!”
As I’d heard these, I’d, known that these were, signs of, Alzheimer’s Disease, and, as the elders were lifted to get evaluated, the diagnoses of mildly demented would be written on the forms. I’m always glad, that there’s the New Year’s gatherings, that’s allowed the children to note these changes in their elderly parents sooner, so the patients can get the treatments they’d needed earlier.
In recent years, with the government’s advocacy as well as the local communities’ working to let people know more about Alzheimer’s, the families’ descriptions changed. The most recent sounded something like, “Doctor, my mother went to the kitchen, but had forgotten what she needed to get, and returned back to the room, emptyhanded.” “My mother’s reacting slower these days”, “my father seemed to be asking the same questions repeatedly.” But as I’d asked the families, how frequently these things happened? If the parents’ kept at a regular pattern of sleep, or maintained a healthy diet? The children usually couldn’t answer it, and, after the checks had been conducted, it’s usually, false alarms.
So, there are, the pros, and the cons to getting everybody to be more knowledgeable about Alzheimer’s, helping more of the families and the patients, but, on the downside, it’d, given people false scares, that they might become, a caretaker one day, which made them, drag their elders in for the clinical checks.
When I bumped into families like this, I’d always consoled them, to not get into a panic; after all, is the memories fading is not an open and shut case, but, who has, the correct measures of evaluation, to tell us what’s, and what’s, not normal?
It all goes back to the children, only as they’d realized, that their elders are, odd, it’ll, help them face the diagnoses of dementia and get the needed treatments for them. The key is in how the families need to compare the elder to her/his past moments, instead, of just, using the segments, the sporadic instances, and get into panic mode.
And, if, “familiarity” being the key, then, the children should be encouraged more, to go home to visit their aging parents, to call the parents up regularly, asking them about the goings on of their daily lives, and, at the hard-to-come-by occasions of gatherings for the New Year’s, the children need to spend more time with their elders, other than sitting down for the meals, share more conversations with them, do things together, such as going shopping for groceries with them, preparing the meals together, and afterwards, playing the board games, traveling together, visiting friends and families, etc., etc., etc. That way, you can increase the connections between you and your parents, to make the elders happy, that way, you’ll be able to, make the correct decisions of whether or not to take your aging parents to the neurologists or not.
All of these, are to get the elders if they have signs of dementia early, it can help the elders without the signs, to delay the progressions of the aging process, and the families can have a better time, gathering together.
And so, this, is from the neurologist’s perspectives, and, this is important to mention, because we only think about, our own elders, at these times of the year, around the New Year’s, or other occasions for the families to gather together, and if we don’t pay attention on a regular basis, we may, miss out on all the signs, and miss the prime time for the treatments to be, more effective.