r/Alzheimers

Anyone else exhausted by how often they are asked what they are doing for a loved one and being recommended things to “try”? I know it’s all very well intentioned, but, sorry, I don’t have the time or energy to research if magic mushrooms will help my LO. Yes, vitamin b is good for anyone, but when your LO will barely take the meds their neuro prescribes without a fight, how do you expect me to get them to swallow 15 vitamins along with that? No, I did not see the most recent article in Holistic News Health or whatever.
I’m just tired to feeling judged and like I’m not doing enough.

My mom was diagnosed with MCI almost 3 years ago and has now progressed to an Alzheimer’s diagnosis based on blood work for p tau.

She’s 61 years old and this has progressed quickly. She calls my dad and brother on repeat. If they don’t answer, she just calls again over and over again. I don’t think she knows who my sister and I are anymore in relation to her.

She complains that we don’t do enough things as a family and then when we do, she just complains that she wants to go home. She constantly questions my dad on if he still loves her and if they’re still together/married. She has a history of cheating on my dad.

We set her up with a caretaker/someone who can provide her companionship 3x a week and my sister and I take the remaining 2 days to be with her while our dad is at work. It’s exhausting though as we are trying to work from home while also supporting her.

I feel like my mom died 3 years ago. She feels like a distant family member who is just uncomfortable to be around. She’s not even close to the same person anymore. I can’t come to her for anything and as a woman about to start her own family, it’s heartbreaking to feel like you can’t go to your mom for advice even when she’s still walking this earth.

I’m not sure what the point of this post is. Maybe to vent? Maybe to see if anyone else feels the same? Am I a terrible person?

My MIL won’t stop in her words trying to “fix” the couch. She keeps trying to tuck blankets into it and fluffing the cushions over and over again. It has been visibly making her frustrated and tiring her out bad. She constantly is cussing under breath and getting mad then getting right back to the same habit. Me and my fiancé are genuinely lost on what to do.

My mom was just diagnosed with Alzheimer’s last month. She will be 66 this month. Because her diagnosis came at 65, right at the beginning of what is considered late onset, I’m confused as to which hers would be. I asked her to discuss it with her doctor at her next appointment, but was hoping someone could provide some insight here. I think her symptoms started within the last year or two at most. Her doctor has said she is in the early stages of the disease.

Edited to add: I understand that this may not matter to some people but it matters to me. I am trying to get as complete of an understanding of my mom’s specific diagnosis as possible. In the long run, I understand this will likely not matter, but it is information I would like to have.

Buckle in for a long one….. I’m so sorry for that.

MIL was diagnosed finally in 2025 after years of her now late husband saying there was a problem. It wasn’t till after he passed that we really noticed the deficits to the point we had to move her in with us in early 2025. We think dad was unknowingly picking up the slack around the house and taking care of things such as finances and house cleaning. Long story short, diagnosis of vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s. No staging. Neurologist says moderate at this time. Left my job to become her full time caregiver, which I’m happy to do. I’m no stranger to cog decline, bedside nursing teaches you a lot. But this isn’t the end of a long work run where you get new patients weekly. Personality changes are no issue for us. Constant reminders to eat, bathe, manage meds, incontinence…. All no big deal for me, just another day and I’m happy to be her constant record player of reminders. She’s almost always pleasant. But the sleep. For. The. LOVE!! THE SLEEPING!!! We were in cycles of constantly wanting to sleep to not sleeping at all for the most part. Now we seem to have skipped the insomnia cycle. We’re sleeping all. The. TIME. Bright side? Only one or 2 middle of the night walkerless house wonderings 🤦‍♀️😬 But keeping her awake for a few hours in the first part of the day is impossible. I was in tears today trying to keep her up. All her providers, and myself, agree we need to maintain somewhat of a “normal” sleep schedule and implement good sleep hygiene habits. This has helped so much compared to her schedule prior. We all know the drive to sleep all day, be up all night with this disease.
Current schedule:
11:30am up for breakfast and meds
Up till 3 then nap
Up at by 6pm for dinner, evening activities
Bed around 11.
She manages most of this schedule with little reminders, but keeping her up from 11:30am to even 1 or 2pm is becoming impossible. I literally went to the bathroom (2min TOPS!), came out and she was in bed….. asleep!

Walked out to get the mail, bam, in bed asleep.

I’m out of the room for a minute, off in bed asleep again.

I lost my patience after the 3rd time. She can barely walk without the walker but will practically run to bed as soon as there’s no one left in the room. Or try to sleep on the couch, which we are trying to limit per the dr for proper sleep scheduling/hygiene. I ask her if she knows what time she’s supposed to stay awake till, and she puppets back “3pm”. Ask what time it is and she says I don’t know. Reminder notes don’t work. As she walks off to bed and you say “mom, we’re not napping now, it’s time to stay awake” and you get “ok” or baby talk “ohh man, I wanna nap doh” and just says “sorry”. Once she’s up by 6pm post nap she’s fine usually, though will sometimes try to go to bed at 7:30-8pm. She won’t do anything physical, refuses to do her pt/ot exercises, doesn’t want to even go outside and sit on the porch. Can’t make it 30ft without needing to be wheeled to her destination when out of the house. So I don’t think it’s exertion. Meds have been looked at, though it happened before we added trazadone and Norco, we tried stopping 100mg trazadone in pm but then she doesn’t sleep AT ALL at night, which exacerbates the daytime sleepiness. One pm Norco for knee pain, tried stopping that but her discomfort understandably keeps her up all night. Tried giving these meds earlier in the evening, no change. I’m so tired of her being tired. This is so excessive that I have to sit in the room with her at all times. Even then, if I turn my back to fold a couple pieces of laundry, she quickly snuggles into the couch and tries to sleep 🤷‍♀️
I’m so ready to just let her sleep whenever she wants, but then I’ll be sleep deprived and have a whole different set of problems to deal with 🥴
I hate this disease.
I hate that it’s stolen her abilities.
I hate feeling hopeless.
I hate that it is never ending.
I hate the word “sorry” now.
I hate how we have been made into the sleep police. I just hate this.

Thanks for letting me rant….

Yes provider is aware. New imaging scheduled. Neuro recheck scheduled.

Hey guys,

I'm someone who has a father with Alzheimer's in Memory Care at the moment. He's in his 80s and there was a slow progression over the past 4-5 years to the point where he now has forgotten my half-brother and his wife, who he only found about 8 or 9 years ago. He's just had two falls in rapid succession and has lost about 25-30% or more of his body weight over the past 1.5 years. They're giving him high calorie based foods but he seems to want to eat less now.

He can still talk. He shuffles around very slowly. But he is fully incontinent, can't brush his own teeth or feed himself well, barely recognises my mum (and has forgotten who she is a number of times) and doesn't seem to really know where he is or really who he is a lot of the time (thought he was escaping a prison when my half-brother went to visit). He also cries a lot of the time now and his memory seems to be reverting back to early life, when he can remember anything at all.

This is obviously a bit of a nightmare for my mum to witness, even though they're divorced. I don't know what to do but I wanted to ask where does this put him on a timeline and in staging. I can't tell from the online stages, as he seems to be in both stage 7 and stage 6 at the same time.

He wasn't the nicest father and he, even before placed in care, tried to take advantage of my mum's generosity. Even divorced she was still looking after him and living with him (or had when he became worse). We've all tried to do what we can for him in care but I wondered if this is going to end any time soon.

He has had a fairly rapid decline in 2 years: from being able to mostly dress himself and feed himself, and even walk around fine, to not being able to do any of those things and shuffling around...so it seems quick.

I also feel bad framing everything in this light...I want to love my dad and I feel compassion for him but the whole thing sucks.

Mom knew four languages, Russian as a child, Polish as a pre-teen to young adult and English since emigrating. While her language skills are minimal these days due to late stage Alzheimers was previously speaking more in Polish but now she uses Russian phrases. She hasn't spoken Russian as a daily language since age 5 and while it was the second language in school for years she said she didn't remember any of it. It's odd how Alzheimers has rearranged her brain and the older language skills seem more protected. and have resurfaced a bit