I was reading some of the discussions and one person mentioned her hubby was in stage 6. I'm a little confused. What are the stages of alz/dementia and how do you know what stage your husband is in? All I know is that sometimes he seems like the person I married and then he's a totally different person. I know this disease is very confusing and you never know what to expect but no one has ever told me about any stages. Have I been hiding under a rock? Can someone explain these stages and I'd like to know how I can determine what stage my husband is in? Thanks.
First of all, I have to let you know up front that I feel quite strongly that being overly concerned about what stage our spouses are in is not necessary. Many of the spouses on this board are quite into categorizing their husbands/wives into stages, sub stages, and sub, sub stages. To me, it doesn't matter. They go from functioning well, to less well, to less well, to incapacitated. But they also show some behaviors in one stage, and other behaviors in other stages, and continually jump from one to the other and change. Many die of something else long before they end up in the last stages of Alzheimer's Disease.
However, I do understand the desire to have a general idea of what is coming, so I have stages listed in various resources on the home page - www.thealzheimerspouse.com. Look on the left side of that home page, and click on the box that says - "Newly Diagnosed? New Member? Confused and don't know where to turn? Click here for information to get you started." When that page comes up, scroll down to the links about stages. There are quite a few of them there, giving you a variety of answers.
Lee, Many Neurologists refuse to use the STAGE charts..if that's any help. The one who took care of my husband was a noted Neurologist Specializing in Alzheimers Disease at Baylor's Health Science Center in Houston. She - for one - preferred to say, Early Stage, Moderate, Moderately Severe, Severe, etc. So, just go with the flow. What I would see when I read the charts was that my husband was in Stage 4, 5, 6 and 6 A, B, and C. See what I'm saying. No one is 'strictly by the book', in one stage. My husband was considered SEVERE, yet he was not incontinent. Others are 4's and incontinent. Some lose their ability to speek at the very last stage, whereas Mary (Red)'s husband stopped speaking years ago. No two will ever follow a chart.
Hang in there... and try not to fit his losses into one little box. T'aint gonna happen.
I agree, somewhere in the caregivers brain we would LIKE to have this organized into one little package but the further along in this journey I go the more I realize that it isn't possible. I always saw those numbers as a gauge and nothing else.
We WANT to pin down stage because we WANT to be able to project the future. (speaking very personally here.)
It's pointless though. It doesn't work. Even if we get stage "right" we don't know how long before the next one. Then, as Joan and others have noted, almost no one fits correctly into the chart. Too much individuality.
I think there is a use for the description of stages though. You can read ahead and get a heads up on what deficits are likely to be coming your way, which is better than being surprised I think.
I might add that one can jump from Moderate to Severe in a giant leap if there is a tramautic incident. In our case, it was a broken hip. One night we were at the country club and my DH was happy, ordered his own meal from the menu and switching back and forth between Spanish with one waitress to English with me. Later that night he fell. After that episode, he slipped into SEVERE. No in between.