Alzheimer s A Progressive Disease - 865 Words

Imagine greeting your grandparents and being met with a blank stare. Visualize your father struggling to recall how to dress himself. Picture your own mother asking for her parents who have long since passed. Try to envision the expression on your parents’ face as you tell them that they can no longer live at home alone. Now picture yourself in their place: gradually losing your freedom, your memory, and your very own identity. Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease that slowly destroys the brain’s function of memory and cognition. Eventually, it terminates the person’s ability to do everyday tasks and requires the person to be under around-the-clock care. Alzheimer’s disease is named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer. In 1906, Dr. Alzheimer†¦show more content†¦Medical professionals often use the three stage Alzheimer’s disease model to simplify the complex disease. Stage one of Alzheimer’s disease is classified as the mild and early stage. After initial diagnosis, a patient has entered this first stage. The changes that occur during stage one are simple but are a huge red flag that the symptoms will progressively get worse. A patient in the mild stage has frequent memory loss. The memory loss a patient experiences is not simply forgetting where their keys are, but routinely putting the keys in places where they do not belong, such as the refrigerator or dishwasher (â€Å"Alzheimer’s Disease†). Stage one also causes patients to ask the same question over and over because they are unable to form a memory about previously asking the question. A patient in the mild stage of Alzheimer’s also begins to develop mild coordination problems and mood changes. The patient has difficulty with the simple task of holding a pen and writing. The mood of a person at this stage is frequently what psychiatrists term a flattening of affect and withdrawal (Reisburg). This means the person becomes less emotionally responsive. The patient’s change of mood is partially due to their denial of brain changes because it is too painful for them to handle their own