What Are Age Dementia Symptoms?

Are They a Normal Part of Aging?

When the ticket was found in her wallet—the first place she had looked—we were a little concerned.

Age Dementia Symptoms may seem normal, but they are not. Increasing forgetfulness is not a natural sign of the aging process.

We knew that Mom was getting older (although 60 really isn’t OLD!), but it was obvious that the forgetfulness and confusion we were noticing in her behavior were not a normal symptom of age.

So what is normal and what’s not?

Here is a list of symptoms you may want to investigate further.

• Difficulty Controlling Emotions
The dementia patient may become fearful, paranoid, angry or even violent.
• Increasing Difficulty in Taking Care of Oneself
Dementia patients may forget how to put on a blouse or how to correctly button a jacket or zip their pants. They are at danger of leaving a pan of water boiling on the stove long after the water has evaporated. Completing routine tasks becomes harder also. They may put toothpaste on the toothbrush, but forget to brush their teeth or take a shower and forget to dry themselves with a towel before they get dressed. They also loose muscle control.
• Inability to Use Words Correctly
Dementia patients may be unable to find the right word to use in a sentence. They may substitute a different word that makes no sense to the rest of the sentence or they may become angry and frustrated and lash out at the person they are speaking with. We noticed that our mother would sometimes seem to have the “word of the day.” She would say a word like dog and fill it in for words that she couldn’t remember. Mumbling or slurred speech is another symptom.
• Memory Loss
Dementia patients forget names, places, and the location of everyday objects (keys, eyeglasses, etc.) A person suffering from dementia may ask the same question or tell the same story over and over again with no clue that they are repeating themselves.
• Getting Lost
Dementia patients may walk to the curb to get the mail and have no idea how they got there or how to get back to the house. It is common for a dementia patient to wander away from home and get lost. Becoming disoriented is a common dementia symptom.
• Inappropriate Behavior
Our Mom did everything from trying to swallow a quarter because she thought it was medicine to spilling her food all over the place while eating.
• Mood swings
Very sudden changes from happy to sad are common in dementia patients.
• Lack of Motivation
Dementia patients tend to become absorbed inside themselves and don’t want contact with other people. They may not want to go anywhere either.
• Lack of Ability to Reason
From figuring out an appropriate tip at a restaurant to knowing whether or not to wear a hat when it is snowing outside, the dementia patient looses the ability for abstract thinking and problem solving.
• Sleeping Problems
Insomnia and getting “their days and nights mixed up” are common in dementia patients.
• Personality Changes
Where the dementia patient was once happy and pleasant to be around they may become sad or angry instead.
• Inability to Read and Write
Our mother’s situation was made more difficult because her husband lost his voice box to cancer and communicates by writing notes. Our Mom gradually lost the ability to write and over the past year or so she lost the ability to understand written words. She could read the words, but her comprehension skills were gone.
• Memory Loss
Dementia patients forget names, places, and the location of everyday objects (keys, eyeglasses, etc.) A person suffering from dementia may ask the same question or tell the same story over and over again with no clue that they are repeating themselves.