Living With Relatives or Neighbors With Dementia

Starting in April, my neighbor had a raccoon invasion. Focused as we all were on catching and releasing the raccoons into a better area for them and us, I did not really realize that my neighbors had dementia.  I should have seen it - the subtle change from the man being a person who spent some time each day cleaning up, trimming and overall caring for his own and neighbors' properties to someone who was clearly no longer taking good care of anything. He was clearly not able to do anything correctly. And this was just one of the signs I should have recognized.

Sometimes it is not easy to recognize the signs of Dementia.  We might tend to assign them to what we all think of as old age, where people tend to forget things, become hard of hearing, or have little physical problems.  And to be truthful, the signs of dementia can be very subtle unless we see the people every day.
 Here are 10 of the more common signs, but they are not really exclusive.  It is good to go on one of the web sites and read up on Dementia and Alzheimer's.


1. Memory loss that disrupts daily life
Forgetting of recently learned information (such as how my neighbor came out to check under his house and couldn't understand where the raccoon cage went, when the person who came to trap the raccoons had told him that he was taking the cage; it was inadequate to catch the raccoon. He trapped it once, but it easily worked its way out of the cage, and then would not be fooled a second time.  Others include forgetting important dates and events, asking for the same information repeatedly, relying on memory assistance such as reminder notes, electronic devices or even family members when they have always remembered on their own. Now a person with normal elder functioning ,might be forgetting names or appointments, but remember them again shortly.

2. Changes in planning or solving problems
Some people might develop an inability to develop and follow a plan, or to work with numbers. Tasks like following a recipe correctly or managing monthly bills would be included in this.  Normal elder functioning might be making occasional errors in checkbooks or some other infrequent error, but nothing that is happening daily and generally nothing serious.

3. Difficulty finishing tasks at home, at work, or even leisure tasks
This would include difficulty completing normal tasks that are done repetitively. Normal elder functioning might be asking for help to do something like record a favorite TV show, or explaining the functioning of a new piece of equipment.

4. Confusion of Time and Place
Elders might have confusion regularly about time, place or date.  They might not be able to comprehend an event unless it is happening immediately.  Normal elder functioning would be something like confusing a date, but remembering the correct date once they see a reminder such as a calendar.

5. Difficulty comprehending visual images and spacial relationships
This might include difficulty reading, judging distance, or determining color or contrast. They may look in a mirror and not realize who is in the mirror, or they might believe someone else is in the room. Normal functioning elders might have vision problems related to cataracts or some other age-related challenges.

6. New problems with speaking or writing words
For example, a person with dementia might stop in the middle of the conversation and not be able to continue, or change the topic in a way that doesn't make any sense.  They might repeat themselves or not be able to think of the right words for things. A person might call a watch a wall clock.  Normal elder functioning might including temporarily forgetting something in the midst of a conversation, but remembering it ultimately.

7. Misplacing things and the inability to go back and retrace steps.
Elders might misplace things more and more frequently and be unable to go back and retrace their steps to determine where they were misplaced. Or they might accuse others of stealing for them.  The key is that it would happen more and more frequently. Normal senior functioning would including misplacing something like glasses or the remote control, but finding it again quickly.

8. Decreased or Poor Judgment
This is another one of those things that is recognized by frequency with which it takes place.  Such incidents would be mismanagement of money, or perhaps giving telemarketing huge sums of money, or failing to keep themselves clean and groomed. We all use poor judgment from time to time, but again, the key is the frequency with which it happens.

9. Withdrawal from social or work activities
We might see an increase in withdrawal from work or social activities such as sports, or even the stopping of doing a much enjoyed hobby. The person might be withdrawing because they realize somehow that they are unable to function in these activities normally. Normal elder functioning includes changing social activities; for instance, a person who liked to play cards might begn to go hiking or take up gardening instead.

10. Changes in mood or personality
With dementia, a person becomes more confused, more anxious, more aggitated, suspicious, fearful, aggitated, or even violent.  Usually when a person becomes violent, they are already pretty far along with dementia.

In order to explain the difference between dementia and Alzheimer’s we first need to know what dementia is. Dementia is the deterioration of our cognition. In Latin it means ‘ apart mind.’ In fact it states that your mind is losing the grip of your body. It is important to understand that dementia consists of signs and symptoms. This is because it is a syndrome, not a disease like Alzheimer's. There are many causes for dementia and it can be progressive or stable.


Dementia is a non-specific syndrome that targets different areas on the brain. For this reason there are many different symptoms associated with dementia. Typical areas of the brain that are affects are: communication, memory, orientation, problem solving and attention. Dementia occurs when someone has significant memory loss plus another impairment that together cause social disfunctioning. Unlike Alzheimer’s, dementia is not a disease on itself, but a syndrome with a variety of causes, Alzheimer being one of them.

As stated before, there are different types of dementia and Alzheimer disease is one of them. Alzheimer disease is characterized by the appearance of plaques and tangles in the brain. You can find these tangles and plaques in every aging brain but in people with Alzheimer disease there is an abnormal quantity. These plaques and tangles interfere with the functioning of our brain on different areas on the brain. Alzheimer is also referred to as pathological rapidly aging of the brain.

To summarize, the difference between dementia and Alzheimer's is that dementia is a non-specific syndrome and Alzheimer is a specific disease. Many people can not explain the difference and this is probably because Alzheimer is the most prominent cause of dementia. Almost 70% of all people with dementia have Alzheimer's. Other causes of dementia are stroke; Parkinson's; Lewy Body Dementia (also called Dementia with Lewy bodies, is a form of dementia that shares characteristics with both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases; Pick's Disease or frontotemporal dementia (a rare form of dementia caused by an overabundance of a protein called Tau, which causes shrinking of the frontal and temporal lobes, and it can occur as early as age 20, but the general age at which it occurs is 54); Huntington's Disease (caused by a genetic defect on chromosome #4, and it causes destruction of brain cells. There is adult-onset Huntington's and another form that can start during childhood); and even Aids/HIV.