Are People with Advanced Dementia Aware of Their Surroundings?
Even among medical experts, you will find differing opinions on how much someone with advanced dementia of any type understands. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in particular can render a person mute and uncommunicative, especially during the final stages of the disease. This situation commonly leaves family members wondering how much their loved one is aware of and whether their efforts are providing any comfort.
Loving family members, and others who care for and about people with dementia, would like an answer to their question about how much a person understands. Personally, my non-medical viewpoint is that it varies. As a caregiver, my experiences with many types of dementia suggest to me that people likely do understand their surroundings on some level, even if it may only be picking up on their caregiver’s body language or mood. Also, some individuals have inexplicable moments of clarity where they will seemingly come out of their walled-off state and momentarily return to a state that is similar to their pre-dementia personality.
Moments of Clarity: I was recently chatting with a group of students from a university class that uses my book as a text, and a young woman shared a story about her grandmother that started an interesting discussion.
The young woman was in her twenties and her name was Anna. Although she had never known her grandmother without AD, they still had a close relationship. Twenty years is a long time for the disease to progress, and some people decline much more quickly than others. Anna was fortunate to know her grandmother during the years when she was still able to communicate.
Of course, as her grandmother’s disease progressed, communication became more difficult. Yet, Anna never gave up, and she continues to visit her grandmother regularly. During the later stages when her grandmother was seemingly unable to recognize friends and family members, Anna experienced something both baffling and remarkable.
As she was leaving her grandmother’s room after a visit, Anna hugged her goodbye, as was her habit. As she did so, she said, “I love you, Grandma.” To her astonishment, her grandmother responded with great clarity, “I love you, too, Anna.” Then, her grandmother slipped back into fogginess of her disease.
This occurrence is not as rare as you might think. My dad suffered from a different type of…
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