2019.12.08 02:23
Step aside, biomarkers. Look to the bank account for early signs of dementia
https://www.statnews.com/2019/12/05/dementia-early-warning-check-bank-accounts-not-biomarkers/
2019.12.08 02:48
2019.12.08 11:59
Right subject on right time, Dr. Lee!
Indeed, I painfully watched one of my mentors, John Bergan, who slowly fell into the dementia before he finished to fulfill his role for the second editor of the Lymphedema Compendium I edited. In the middle of the night, after the midnight, he started to call me up infrequently, asking about some chapters under his editting and then slowly faded away, and even forgot with whom he was talking. John was a legendary veno-lymphatic surgeon, Northwestern U group ever produced and I had a great debt with his guidance for many decades. Indeed, I stil consider he is THE most brilliant minded surgeon I ever encountered so that I simply could NOT swallow his wheelchair-bound condition when I visited him to the nursing home before he passed away and helplessly wept in front him.
Now I began to worry about my own rapid loss of the memory for the last few years, especially of the name of the persons surroundling me closely through decades. Though we do NOT have a family history of such mental illness but I never thought I would live out to the age over 80, scary!!!!
So tell us more about this senile dementia and also Alzheimer's disease to ease our anxiety.
Anxiously,
BB Lee of Class '63
This is a very interesting yet very important story for the elderly and
their families.
I had an honor as a medical practitioner to take care of one of a few mentors
whom I regarded as my substitute father. He was 20 yrs older than me and
lived to be 92 yrs of age. He was an honest goodness old fashioned internist and much more
who commanded respect out of his principled examples throughout his career.
His wife also died under my care who developed Alzheimer's.
Shortly before his wife died, he himself was diagnosed to have the same.
His two sons and I closely coordinated the care giving to him closely.
One day his younger son who was monitoring his father's monthly bank statement noticed
that his father wrote checks to 300 different or same charity organizations.
This happened while he appeared to function normally without showing any obvious problems
of Alzheimer's. From then on his son took over his finance and check writing as arranged ahead of time.
In other words, impaired financial judgement may well be early signs of Alzheimer's as indicated
in this article.