Many Dementias

My mother, of 86 years of age, has dementia. But we do not really know what that means. At first, she was slow and fragile; her short-term memory was shot. The doctors found high calcium in her blood and diagnosed a benign tumor in the hyperthyroid. They operated and she came back energetic, hyperactive, and hallucinating and talking with her dead mother and sister. Then she stopped eating and only drank when directed. She shrank in weight and became nearly catatonic. I met with the family as I predicted a quick death. I made the family take uncomfortable decisions.  We admitted her to a nursing home, and when my sister visited her four hours later and saw how anxious she was, mum came back home. She had an infection, ended up in hospital, and came back with a bloody nose. This abuse further solidified the primary caregiver, my younger brother's determination to protect mum by keeping her home. Then she started independently eating and drinking and while still looking for her dead relatives, she was getting more exercise than anyone else. She was physically getting stronger. She is in constant motion and repeats nonsensical words as though she is praying. From the moment she wakes up to the last breath at night she is in motion and vocal.

It seems there are layers of diseases, one waiting for the other to emerge and take priority, or both acting at the same time. Our categorization of diseases is not designed for older people with multiple diseases. Especially in psychiatric nosology, the idea of identifying specific diseases as distinct and independent diseases is nonsensical. As we get older the body ages across the board. A weaker heart, lung, muscles, skeleton, joints,  everything is diminished, some more than others. An emerging disease is not independent but can be an expression of all of these small deteriorations. My mother had a hyperthyroid tumor that created a calcium imbalance that slowed her cognition and body down, and she also had Lewy Bodies Dementia that created the hallucinations, and ontop of these she also must have Vascular dementia or Alzheimer’s disease that destroyed her memory. All of these were acting upon her at the same time. Then there are other neurological diseases that we still have not identified. Her improved eating habits cannot be explained by the dementia diagnosis alone. There are other changes that are hidden from us. Among 90-year-olds half of the cause of their dementia is unknown as there are so many other biological changes happening. When there are neurological deficits you can be certain that other diseases will emerge at the same time. Aging might be the most obvious factor, but that does not inform us on how to prevent or delay dementias as we cannot stop aging, but we can improve how we age.  Psychiatric nosology will eventually be dragged kicking and screaming through this terrain of older patients’ maladies until we finally admit that unless we start looking at the whole person, studying aging and not just diseases, we will never get a handle on dementia.