A little alzheimer's help, please.

[Finless]

This is a bit of a long shot but does anyone know of where I can get a list of questions suitable to ask my Dad who is suffering from Alzheimer's. I am specifically after a written version so that repitition is constant and he may start learning to remember some names and .......... again.

I have Googled and I have searched on Alzheimer's forums but I had no luck with the former and the latter (the few that I tried) didn't seem to be a forum as I understand it (probably looking in the wrong bit).

Despite the fact that I see him every day my Dad doesn't know who I am anymore and I had hoped that a suitable quiz (which he may still like doing) may be a way of giving him something to do and maybe remind him of ...............

I started typing out some questions and then I realised that, for example, if I asked in an early question "how many sons do you have' and then later "name your two sons" that maybe he might relearn or hang on to factual or word associations. A properly put together quiz might have more possibilities than just taking each question in isolation?

It is surprisingly difficult to compile a suitable set of questions without getting too difficult?

I suppose the obvious thing is to contact the doctor in charge of his case at the hospital and ask him ............... FFS, why didn't I think of that before I'd typed ................ I swear to God, I'm sure my memory is failing badly ............ is Alzheimer's a genetic ..........................

[Conor]

PM on its way

[Gareth Burrows]

give the alzheimer's Society helpine in London a call on 0845 300 0336. they will have everything you need.

G

[Finless]

I'm still pursuing my own questionaire design ............ how do I easily get lines across the page in MS Word (so he can follow the question more easily and have a line to write on).

[purple vonny]

I made my dad a photo album.

I put a photo on every page and wrote things like "this is me at university", "this is me on my wedding day to Marie" (the ME being him)

Although he didn't remember a lot of the people in the photos, he seemed to recognise himself and he enjoyed looking through the album with me over and over again.

It seemed less distressing than asking him questions that he couldn't answer.

[TerryH]

I found that short-term was useless, but long-term very sharp.

So I'd concentrate on that and introduce myself in that context.
Usually along the lines of "do you remember the house in Bristol" and
"can you remember the small boy that lived there."

Then after a bit of prompting he'd sorta realise that it was me.

You may already have this, but checkout Stages of Alzheimer's

Not nice to read to the end, but at least it put it all in perspective
and helped me a lot to give it some structure.

None of this is very nice, so you have my sympathy, which is about all
we can do, I'm afriaid.

T.

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