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Hello everyone.

One of the worst symptoms that my Father is his dementia.  What seems to
be odd is that his behavior seems to be different than other forms of
dementia that I've read about or heard about.

I've checked the archives of this list and haven't really been able to
find anything that relates to my fathers condition.  His dementia has
progressed rapidly.

My father doesn't seem to flash back in time, or forget where he is.  He
sometimes gets confused on what he is doing, but that is very rare and
usually when he is really tired.

Mostly, he can't communicate.  He seems to understand everything that's
going on, and what is said to him, but he can't respond.  He often says
yes when he means no and vise versa.  He often talks in his sleep, but
my Mother tells me that lately it is just gibberish.

Last weekend my father spent in the hospital due to an infection.  While
he was sick, he would often wake up and start talking (mostly
gibberish).  However, there were times when he was awake that he tried
to respond, and was sometimes partially coherent, and once or twice, he
was more coherent than he has been in a long time (many Months).  It
seemed that he was at least trying to respond, and sometime succeeding.

Since he has been back from the hospital he has reverted back to barely
saying anything.  He has been taking Aricept for a while, but it seems
to have no affect.

He can usually read pretty good.  He can count fairly well, say the
alphabet.  We show him pictures of the family, and he has a tough time
saying peoples names.  He'll often say one persons name for another, or
get stuck on one name (most often my Mothers).

His other parkinson's symptoms are mostly slow movement.  He has random
movement of his legs, that the neurologist said was a side effect of his
medication.  He doesn't really have any tremors.  He has recently had
problems with incontinence and he has had problems with constipation for
a few Months now.

He was referred to a psychiatrist by his neurologist, who has diagnosed
him as being depressed.  He has just started taking Centrex.  I read in
the archives that the therapeutic affects of anti-depressants could take
4 to 6 weeks, so we'll see what happens over the next Month.

I also will look into possible side effects of the various, and
numerous, medication that he is one, to see what, if any, of his
symptoms may be caused by this.

I'll also be checking into other diseases that may cause this type of
behavior.

I'm sorry that this note is so long.  Mostly I want to know if anyone
has any other suggestions of things to check into, besides what I stated
above.  I wanted to try to hold off and do as much research on my own as
possible before bothering everyone on this list, but my Mother is having
a difficult time, so I would appreciate any feedback.

--
Richard R. Klemmer
WebTrek L.L.C.
http://www.webtrek.com
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