Alzheimer's Long and Costly Goodbye -- Heartache and Hope: America's Alzheimer's Epidemic (Ep. 1)

when a flag holding a flag that has 48 stars life is living in a constant search looking for something that isn't there this is how pati describes life with dementia born an only child in a few years she would become valedictorian of her high school graduated magna laude from Syracuse University now daily activities often leave her lost and confused I walked down in the kitchen in the mornings and I have to stand there and say okay you make your coffee and the voice goes how do you do that I mean really I do that with everything I mean there were when I first realized I was doing this I would be turning around in a circle in my kitchen saying okay and I didn't tell anybody I was doing this because I didn't want anybody to know generally patients with Alzheimer's or other dementia don't recognize signs of the disease's themselves it's right generally recognized by their families or their friends who notice that something isn't quite right they're forgetting things they're they're just not behaving as they normally would things are slipping by them and oftentimes these are very subtle takes months to a couple of years before they really realize something is dreadfully wrong here as it continues it impairs everyday life so eventually people cannot take care of themselves dementia and the most common form of dementia Alzheimer's disease are largely associated with aging and are among the fastest-growing and most devastating epidemics in the country dementia and Alzheimer's disease are diseases of the brain that affects memory but can march on either slowly or abruptly to involve other cognitive function table Penny can you repeat that please such as planning sequencing naming calculation to the point that it affects someone's ability to function on a day-to-day basis you say the truck rolled over the stone bridge that rolled Oh loss of memory really defines the disease and it also defines who we are as people without our memory we have no past we can't plan the future and we can't appreciate the present so I think many of us truly fear getting Alzheimer's disease because we fear losing who we are as people the truck rolled over the stone bridge all the dementia is a remarkable disease it spares nobody it spares nobody regardless of race gender and wealth socioeconomic status what you did in life dementia and Alzheimer's disease affects about 10-15 percent of people over the age of 65 and up to fifty percent of people over the age of 85 the people Americans over the age of 85 is the fastest growing population a segment in our country it's going to be an enormous problem the only because we are just at the beginning of the baby boom generation the boomer generation turning 65 so if you fast forward that to 1020 years you can see the magnitude of this problem the statistics on Alzheimer's disease are alarming every 68 seconds someone else is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease not always in increasing in prevalence but it's it's probably our most costly health care condition and will continue to be so for for many years until we have some corrective actions it's it's billions I think if you took dementia as a an industry I think it's it's bigger than Walmart I would characterize this disease as the most important medical problem today more than five million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease more than 30 million people worldwide and because the fastest-growing segment in many populations is the elderly the expectation is that the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease will triple in coming decades when I started doing research the cost of Alzheimer's disease care was around a hundred billion a year now it's far over 200 billion a year and again by 2050 it's estimated to be more than 1.2 trillion dollars a year in fact Alzheimer's disease which now has moved up from eighth or ninth leading cause of death to sixth leading cause will bankrupt the world's economy it will bankrupt the United States who will bankrupt the European economies it will bankrupt the Japanese economies any of these countries that have populations that can live long enough to get Alzheimer's disease which is a disease of aging will face these tremendous economic burdens just five years after leaving the White House former President Ronald Reagan's diagnosis brought Alzheimer's directly into the spotlight it was 1994 when my father was diagnosed and people really weren't talking about Alzheimer's that much it was like a well-kept secret and suddenly overnight everyone in the world knew that my father had Alzheimer's I had to accept this as how I was going to lose him and I didn't know nobody could tell me how I mean nobody could tell me how it was how the disease was going to unfold or what was going to happen popular TV personality and entrepreneur Leeza Gibbons has been years in front of the camera but few knew her personal story unfolding in recent years behind the Z's Alzheimer's I think is the cruelest sentence that can happen to a family and it does happen to a family like death and slow motion so for our family we felt like what millions of other families feel like we were really lost Lisa's mother who had been her lifelong inspiration and best friend was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease my mom decline was over ten years I remember one of the first times that I had to come to terms with the fact that she didn't know me which is I think the hardest moment for all caregivers you know how can you be so close and so important and share so much and look at this woman and there's just a vacant stare I had gone home to help my mom in her house and we were making the bed and mom looked up and she said you are such a nice lady who are you again and I took a moment to feel that awful hurt and that stabbed in my heart and then I knew it was the disease it was not my mom and I said I'm your daughter my name is Lisa and I'm always gonna be here for you it's a loss like no other because as this disease progresses and as people lose their memories they also lose their relationships and so family members talk about living with a stranger living with someone who's no longer there anymore because that relationship is lost the losses are staggering and they're often slow it's been termed a Long Goodbye the patient is slowly losing pieces of who they were so it's a devastating disease for families and their loved ones a difficult aspect is that patients often have limited insight into their cognitive losses their memory losses so they may not understand the devastation and the losses that they have suffered where the family members see it and they feel it and they feel the loss of that loved one very deeply Alzheimer's has a tremendous impact on the family so first there is the disease itself that steals the patient away from the family there are their personality changes they become a different person in many cases they become forgetful they need more help so one effect is just the grief that the family goes through and seeing their loved one disappear before their eyes the toll is emotional physical and financial pati had plans to leave an inheritance for her son I have a reverse mortgage so they can't take my house away from me they being the big monster I don't know but I mean I couldn't be drained of every bit of finances I had and which would be his inheritance that terrifies me how can this happen I've taken over many of the family responsibilities that I you know didn't do before paying I always paid bills but now I do the taxes and things of that she does everything well Rabbi Harry Roth carries for his wife Lillian who has Alzheimer's virtually every moment of the day we was having lunch just a few minutes ago and we looked up at one of the women whom I didn't recognize so she must be a new resident he was being wheeled out in the wheelchair and above her head there were three balloons we said one zero zero she thought she turned a hundred years old today there are people here that are 100 to over a hundred years old and the field the estimate how many people are going to be suffering from Alzheimer's in ten years or 20 years is unbelievable this year the federal government declared war on Alzheimer's disease releasing its first ever national Alzheimer's plan the national plan is is first and foremost I think about putting the spotlight on this condition and so focusing people in terms of their efforts and coming up with solutions a big part of that plan is actually in investing in research but there are other aspects of the plan that have to do with supporting health care and helping healthcare really reinvent itself we're not ashamed or afraid to use the term Alzheimer's and I know so many people think it's like a venereal disease I can't understand that because if you demystify it and people aren't perhaps going to be as afraid and they'll get help when they can more on how the US healthcare system is reinventing itself to address the Alzheimer's epidemic again the promise of new Alzheimer's drugs and what we can do to help prevent Alzheimer's and other dementia in our next yeah Dwyer you

Channel: UCTVTips

Views: 158,428

Keywords: Alzheimer's, dementia, UCLA, aging, elderly, caregiver, health care, epidemic, Baby Boomer

Id: cRb7l2C7E6U

Length: 12min 30sec (750 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 17 2012