My dad has diagnosed dementia, not Alzheimer’s. I think they said it’s likely vascular or nonspecific. The doctor recently wrote in her notes “poor insight “, which I agree with
he can converse . His reasoning about simple things can be ok. Overall his reasoning is mostly flawed, only occasionally is sharp. His short term memory is horrendous . He thinks his memory is good because he can remember things from the distant past .
Is there any way to get them to realize how bad their dementia is? Or forget trying that?
when it was less bad and he was at home, he would admit having dementia , he recognized what the neurologist was saying and that it’s an explanation for not finding words etc. Now that he’s worse , he denies it and tries to claim he’s improved and sharp!
You are trying too hard to bring him back to normal understanding, won't work.
So if they ask explain it on a level that there cognitive decline is. Make it brief and change the subject.
Otherwise I wouldn't.
That is to say there are days you can speak with them about it better than other days.
My brother was diagnosed, after a car accident, with "probable early Lewy's dementia". He was diagnosed by symptoms he described for the doctors. Scans showed little. He was at the time living on his own, with me at the other end of our long state.
I had already started to notice a difference in his hand writing, but his long letters were still good. Then, when we talked on the phone suddenly he wasn't there. He said it was his phone. Phone company said phone was fine. Odd things. I went to visit and he wasn't eating as well. Was more thin. Suddenly HATED grocery shopping. Said store was ''too big; too much stuff" (it kind of was) In the evening, one cocktail and he was gone--kind of silly. Not much else. Poor balance. Vivid dreams he could remember and believed he was awake when having them (he was having first hallucinations).
Then the call about the accident from the hospital. He was still so seemingly "with it". Got together with his attorney. Make me POA and made me Trustee. Said he KNEW something was happening before it happened, but throught it was "other stuff; the phone company's fault, etc". Worried more about his own driving skills. That sort of thing. Dreams that happened when awake. Knew he needed to go where he "was safe" (ALF).
We would often talk. He would say what he saw and I would say what I saw and he KNEW he wasn't seeing it right. We got him into a good assisted living. He could talk about being afraid of what was coming, but said he was glad to know why he saw the world so messed up. He was glad to know he had dementia and it wasn't his fault. But he dreaded the loss of all control.
Much as we could reason and talk, more and more we could NOT. He began to get paranoid. Thought someone stole from him. Couldn't be reasoned with tho he was wrong. Hid things. Had hallucinations he now thought not a dream, but real.
So sometimes he could grasp things and sometimes he could not, and it was worsening. He died of sepsis before it could get him, and he was happy about that while in hospice his last days at the beginning of Covid.
For a while I think, in the beginning for many people, is "good days" and "bad days". The latter become the more common. It all becomes slowly worse, and then it speeds up. And on you go.
Different perhaps in each case. I always say it's as individual as our own thumbprint.
Try to not have those conversations, they do no good because your dad's brain is now unable to see his deficiencies, this to shall pass in time.
He will never accept that he has dementia. All that will happen if you try to explain will be a fight. It's not worth it.
If the doctor has made a diagnosis, hopefully you have an active POA and can start making the decisions before your father makes a mess that you will be stuck trying to cleaning up.