Aging and Disease

The confusing and upsetting feelings of disorientation are extremely common in Alzheimer’s disease and can cause patient’s to forget who and where they are.

Not knowing your name or address or the correct day or month is a very common symptom that helps define the disease, as such feelings are closely connected with a person’s memory or the ability to remember.

The nature of the memory loss can be very deceptive as gradually little things disappear from the sufferer’s memory almost unnoticed for weeks or months even by those closest to the patient.

A sufferer may look around them puzzled as they are not sure where they are, even though they may be in familiar surroundings. They may forget your name or birthdays.

Gradually the symptoms will get worse as the disease becomes more severe.

Patients will forget the correct month, become unsure of the days of the week or even forget what their own name is.

Eventually their memory loss will become so severe they remain in a constant state of disorientation and confusion.

It’s not uncommon for an Alzheimer’s patient to get so confused that they travel to a home they lived in 30 years or so previously.

By this stage their short term memory is so dysfunctional, and has been replaced with their long term memories, that they no longer remember that they moved away from that house.

Other patients can suffer severe problems if, for example, English is a second language.

As their memory is lost to the effects of Alzheimer’s disease they can lose the ability to speak or understand others speaking in their adopted language.

Eventually even their ability to read, write and converse is lost and the Alzheimer’s sufferer can be forced to retreat into their own little world.

Tags: Illness, Cancer

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