Interview 44 – Carers of people with dementia

She was 86 when she started to have symptoms of dementia. Her doctor mistook it for ‘old age’. Prescribed Aricept but husband felt it had been left too late. Cared for at home, helped by live-in couple. Attended day centre.

The carer feels that the chance of his wife benefiting from treatment was reduced due to the delay in confirming the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.

Age at interview 86

Gender Male

Age at diagnosis 86

I talked to these people and most of them said,Oh well or some of them said perhaps the more knowledgeable ones saidAh well they can do something about that nowadays. You know articles in the press and one thing and another mentions a drug To whit I said, which is the only one that ve had any note of that might halt the progress of this thing, if it were to be Alzheimes.

Clinical psychologist I suppose. I dot know what you would call them anyway but they were, specialists and they came round with, in some case a community nurse or one thing and another and sat at this table and gave [my wife] tests. Oh last year I suppose, the normal type of thing that I associated with experimental psychological tests really, you know tests of all the various facilities and faculties and so on and so forth.

And then chatting with them afterwards, the general, consensus seemed to be that certainly [my wife] had got this, these failings but they did not or were not prepared to prescribe anything like this until it was – in their mind – confirmed that she had in fact got Alzheimes. So reluctantly I had to agree with this. Now it took about nine months and several visits from them when they tested and then saidWell wll re-test you after a while to see whether there has been any deterioration of various abilities

And finally sitting here Dr [name of psychiatrist] said to meWell, yes the answer is Alzheimes and we would recommend that we put your wife on 5 milligrams of Aricept a day and then for a while and see how that goes and then wll test again and if necessary wll put the dose up to 10 milligrams a day, test again and all the rest of it. And that is the situation that wre in at the moment.

I was, well you cannot be annoyed with doctors and there the bosses after all, they should know what there doing. But I, did feel that waiting for something like nine months with the deterioration being perceptibly worse and knowing that had it been prescribed nine months earlier it might well have arrested it at a much more less serious, condition.

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