Dementia | Hank Dunn

Compassionate, informed advice about healthcare decision making

Archive for the ‘Dementia’ Category

Is Alzheimer’s a Terminal Disease?

Posted October 5, 2015 by kbrachle

I say yes.

I have sold over 3 million copies of my book Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Artificial Feeding, Comfort Care, and the Patient with a Life-Threatening Disease. Only once, in the 25 years since the First Edition came out, I received a complaint from a reader who took issue with my claim that Alzheimer’s Disease is a terminal disease.

They told me, “You don’t die from Alzheimer’s. You die from something else like pneumonia, or a stroke, or cancer.”

Advanced dementia leads to what finally takes the patient

But I say, in most cases, the advanced dementia leads to what finally takes the patient. For example, pneumonia is a very common cause of death for these people. The end stage of Alzheimer’s is marked by increased eating difficulties and increased frequency of fevers. Getting food or fluid in the lungs can lead to pneumonia that can lead to death. 50% of advanced dementia patients who are hospitalized for pneumonia or a fractured hip are dead within six months.

There is even a recognizable “end stage” of this disease. Persons in the last phase of Alzheimer’s qualify for hospice benefits under Medicare. Families and physicians often modify the goals of medicine for advanced dementia patients. It is not unusual for a family to decline the use of antibiotics to treat pneumonia. This is an accepted standard of care.

It is helpful to think of this being considered terminal

In my view it is helpful for people to think in terms of this condition being considered terminal. You think in terms of how to best keep the patient comfortable rather than curing everything that comes along. It encourages everyone to do the emotional and spiritual work to prepare for dying.

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Slow Down, You Are Doing Too Much

Posted August 21, 2015 by kbrachle

“Let her go in peace,” was my bottom-line message.

ER trips, IV antibiotics, bulb syringes … all had become extraordinary measures … in my view.

A woman called me out of the blue yesterday. A hospice worker had given her my Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Artificial Feeding, Comfort Care, and the Patient with a Life-Threatening Illness. I am not exactly sure what she wanted from me as she talked rapidly and pretty much constantly through our close to an hour on the phone.

This never-married woman was the primary caregiver for her 96-year-old mother. The old lady had suffered strokes and dementia was advancing. Because of the swallowing difficulty the daughter was forcing food into her mother’s mouth with a bulb syringe. This is a rubber device, shaped like a tear drop. You suck food into the bulb then stick the narrow end into the patient’s mouth and force the contents out.

Medical professionals encouraged the daughter to slow down

It sounds like the medical professionals in both hospice and the hospital have encouraged the daughter to slow down. But she has sent her mom to the ER three times over the last several weeks. “Maybe if they just give her some IV hydration she would start eating better,” her logic went.

Having listened for about a half hour I asked her, “What is the future for your mother?”

“She is dying.”

Bingo. She said what I was hoping for. In hundreds of such conversations over the years I have asked questions to help caregivers come to their own conclusion about the big picture.

Dying people stop eating and drinking at the end of life. Dying people probably will dehydrate leading to a more peaceful and compassionate death. Dying people talk less and sleep more. Dying people can get aspiration pneumonia once known as “the old man’s friend.”

“I feel so guilty all the time”

Then the lady moved into my chaplain’s area. “I feel so guilty all the time.” She wept.

“Guilty? For what?” Caregiver guilt is not uncommon.

Once, when she mentioned to a doctor she felt guilty for not doing enough, he said, “If you want to feel guilty about something, feel guilty for doing all this to your mother.” I wouldn’t have said it that way. But basically I suggested she start doing less.

I recommended that if she wanted her mother to have a peaceful death at home she not call the rescue squad, she not use antibiotics for aspiration pneumonia, and maybe stop using the bulb syringe. Oh…and she stop feeling guilty.

I actually have little hope she will stop feeling guilty as it has been her constant companion since childhood she told me. But I did tell her, “You can never make a wrong decision. You do the best you can with the information you have at the time. That is all we can ask of anyone. Maybe later will you look back and see how things could have been done differently. But in the moment you just do the best you can.”

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We Didn’t Want to Put Him Through That Again

Posted August 10, 2015 by kbrachle

I just got off the phone with the widow of an old friend of mine. She called to let me know her husband died last week. I hadn’t heard. He was 70. Alzheimer’s.

I’m not sure he knew me

I last saw him in October on my way to a speaking engagement near Orlando. This was the week before he entered a memory care unit. I’m not sure he knew me. He told stories and laughed like he always did but his words made no sense.

We had grown up in the same neighborhood and I followed him three years behind to the University of Florida. He played baseball, me football. He went into law, me the ministry. Over the years I would stop by and we would go fishing. He loved to fish the lakes.

His wife told me he died from aspiration pneumonia. A very typical way for advanced dementia patients to go. They get food or fluid in their lungs and an infection follows. Often these patients are treated with antibiotics and the pneumonia is cleared up. Then the decline of the patient continues and they get pneumonia again, etc., etc.

“We didn’t want to put him through that again.”

They refused antibiotics and called hospice. She told me he died the most peaceful death.

Around Christmas he had gone into the hospital and “it was a horrible experience.” “We didn’t want to put him through that again.” They didn’t.

I told her she did the right thing. I said, “It is so routine to put the people in the hospital, pump antibiotics into them and they are saved only to get worse. I cannot say enough good things about how you handled this. It is so out of the norm but in my view the best of care.”

Hank

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Alzheimer’s and Hope

Posted April 5, 2013 by kbrachle

I never thought I would see those two words together. Alzheimer’s and hope. Well, maybe, “I hope I never get Alzheimer’s.” Okay…I’ve heard that a lot.

I have been reading some really hopeful stuff from someone with Alzheimer’s Disease. David Hilfiker, a physician, is on a mission to make this eventually fatal disease less scary. Last September he was diagnosed with mild progressive dementia, probably Alzheimer’s. The Washington Post ran a story about David’s life now and his new vocation as one who is losing his mind.

Dr. Hilfiker has spent his life excelling. High School valedictorian. Standout at Yale. Med school grad and rural physician. Inner city physician for the poor. Founder of Joseph’s House, a hospice for homeless people with fatal diseases. Author of three books. Husband of 44 years, father and grandfather.

Our paths have actually crossed. We were members of the same faith community and in a mission group together for a while in the early 80s. I sent him a draft of my first book, Hard Choices for Loving People, and he was so kind to offer significant suggestions for improvement. That’s a whole other story. I had lost touch with him and then saw the piece about him in the Post.

Watching the lights go out

David is writing a blog about his experience, “Watching the Lights Go Out.” It begins last September with the diagnosis which confirmed his suspicions that he was losing his cognitive capabilities. He chronicles the mental mistakes he has made, the forgetfulness, preparing for a future in a nursing home, telling his family, friends, and church.

In February he gave a sermon to the congregation where he is a member, the Eighth Day Faith Community (part of Church of the Saviour). Titled “A Theology Out of My Life with Alzheimer Disease,” he tells of the lessons he has learned. He has learned to let go of shame and guilt for mistakes (whether caused by his disease or not). In other words, to be more forgiving of himself. He has become more emotionally available to his wife, family, and friends.

Live in the present

For me, the greatest lesson is one for all of us. Live in the present. He told the Post reporter the same thing, “’If I live in the future, it’s a very painful disease,’ Hilfiker said one recent afternoon as he sat at his kitchen table in Northwest Washington. ‘If I live in the present, it’s not.’”

Do yourself a favor. Go to his blog and sermon. I’ll stop with just a few quotes from his blog. Thank you David!

Perhaps this Alzheimer’s is allowing me to enjoy my life for the first time, not because things are any better, but because I’m more emotionally in touch with the goodness. I feel rooted, grounded. I’m where I’m supposed to be. I’m not looking for something else, something better. And this gift comes through my disease.

So when I discovered I had Alzheimer’s, I could look back at my life without regret that I didn’t choose to do this or dare to do that. Marja and I have had a good life. And far from preventing me from doing things, so far this disease and its process have given me a richer life. I now have a well-defined call and a fulfilling vocation (writing and speaking about this illness). Sure, I’m younger than I hoped I would be when I contracted my last disease. Certainly I would like to live longer, see my grandchildren grow up. But we all have to die, and I’ve been given much more than most people.

And now I’ve been given this adventure!

[2016 UPDATE: Turned out he did NOT have Alzheimer’s and he wrote a final blog post to update his readers.]

Photo credit Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post