Dementia And The Media

Neuro 403

November 8th, 2005

In the documentary, "Complaints of a Duitiful Daughter", we are presented with Debbie, a daughter who takes care of her mother who is affected by Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Debbie explains that she began noticing these symptoms of mild forgetfulness when her mother all of a sudden forgot that her husband Banish had passed away. This came as a shock to her daughter because she wondered how her mother could forget such a traumatic event in her life. According to research, the caregivers of many patients with AD usually feel this way in the beginning, but eventually the symptoms become more noticeable. For example, Debbie's mother began to ask questions such as: Where is Banish? How did he die again? Even though her mother showed these symptoms she did not think anything of it until her dementia became progressively worse. The documentary depicts a daughter who discovers that her mother has dementia after a routine visit to the doctor. In due course, her mother's dementia moved on to the middle-stage symptoms and her forgetfulness began to interfere with daily activities. She began to utilize notes in order to remind herself of the important events and errands that she needed to accomplish. These notes became problematic because she was not able to remember why she had the notes and what exactly they meant. This is a typical example of the beginning stages of AD.

Eventually, her mother began to go through specific periods of memory loss. For example, she went through a "dentist period" where she insisted on going to the dentist repeatedly because she kept forgetting that she had already seen the dentist. Her mother kept looking at her notes, therefore she did not remember what these notes meant. The dentist would continually call her daughter to come pick her up and she had to reassure her mother that she had already been to the dentist. These reassuring conversations would last in her memory for a small amount of time, but eventually she forgot and she was back at the dentist once again.

The symptoms above are all classical examples of how dementia can run its course. The onset of the disease is gradual, but eventually this type of memory loss interferes with daily activities, speech production and comprehension, delusions and changes in personality. In this particular case, her mother's personality changed so much that it greatly affected their relationship. The neurological changes in her brain eventually turned mother into a frustrated older woman who was not able to navigate in once familiar environments. For