How to Get a Diasgnois

jenathp

Hello,

I'm new here. Currently, I'm caring for my Dad (71) and he lives with me. Over the course of 2025 he has fallen several times as a result of heart pausing, heavy drinking, and most recently what we think are seizures. He has broken his back, his arm (requiring surgery and when they put in the pace-maker as well), and his most recent fall occurred while I was out of town and had people coming in daily to check on him. He fell 3 times that day, twice when he was alone, and caused a peripheral nerve palsy leaving him with drop-wrist. 2025 has been a year of a lot of change. He moved in with my husband and I, we sold his house, and he is unable to drive due to his losing consciousness on an irregular but frequent basis.

Over the last few years, we've noticed a cognitive decline as well as his physical ailments increasing. He will frequently forget people visiting, phone calls, and will create wild stories. For example, I got home and he said that we were out of dog food. I looked and we were not. He didn't believe me, and looked again. Then he accused his grandson of coming over and sneaking into the house to put dog food into the bag. He is also unable to manage his medications. He will put the wrong pills into the wrong days, and frequently puts the wrong medications in the wrong bottles after dumping them onto the table.

I've taken over his bill payments, his medication administration and management, and I go to all of his doctor appointments.

His most recent MRI and CT scan show scattered brain lesions across both hemispheres with mild atrophy. I've asked his neurologist (who has not yet gone over the MRI findings with us) to do a cognitive exam so we can get a diagnosis of his mental decline as well as these "frontal lobe seizures" that are causing him to fall.

How have you all worked with doctors to get a diagnosis?

His most recent MRI and CT scans are showing scattered

H1235

Welcome. I think diagnosis is a bit of ruling out other cases. There is a particular type of dementia cased by heavy drinking ( I think that would show up on mri or ct) it called wet brain or Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome. Is the neurologist aware of all the symptoms you mentioned. If you aren’t able to bring these up at an appointment you might try giving the information through a patient portal ( this worked well for me). You could also bring a letter to the office before the appointment. I mainly needed to do this for the pcp. By the time the neurologist was done with the evaluation and testing they had a pretty good idea what was happening. The wild stories forgetting visits are common for dementia. Anosognosia is also common. This is the inability to recognize symptoms and limitations (makes things very difficult for a caregiver). It sounds like he has a lot going on. Unfortunately as far as a dementia diagnosis I wouldn’t expect much beyond a diagnosis from the neurologist. If it is wet brain there may be time for treatment, but with most types of dementia there really isn’t much that can be done. This site is a great resource. Do you have durable power of attorney. This is very important. Do you have hipaa rights? It’s great that you have taken over finances and medications. I have attached a staging tool that may be helpful. I think maybe it’s time to consider 24/7 care. This may be a good question for the neurologist. Notice in the staging tool it gives a rough age equivalence and a recommendation for care for each stage. Sorry you are going through this.

DBAT.pdf

jenathp

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