Decline in verbal ability?

secondcor521 · August 22

My Dad is 89 and in stage 5/6 of mixed Alz/vascular dementia. He lives in a MC facility and has been on hospice for almost three months.

He seems relatively stable except for mostly one thing: his verbal abilities are declining quite a bit. He has gone from mostly full sentences with some word finding difficulties where we could "fill in the blank" pretty easily to now being mumbly, barely saying phrases, and extensive word finding difficulty to the point where frequently I'm not sure at all what he's talking about.

I guess I wonder what this means in terms of disease progression. If you didn't talk to him, you'd think he was stable and doing reasonably well for stage 5. If you only talked to him, you'd say he was in definite decline.

It's confusing.

Damiross · August 22

My wife has lost her verbal skills. Very often, she uses "picture" or "paper" as a pronoun. Many times, she repeats that last two or three words.

Sometimes, it is easy to figure out what "picture" or "paper" means - I ask her if she means something that she had just mentioned. Other times, she gets upset when I ask her what she means by either of those words.

It's frustrating for both of us. I'm the type that asks questions if I don't know what someone is talking about. She already thinks she is stupid and all I am doing by asking her questions is to make her stupider. (I do try to tell her she is not stupid; it's a disease that is affecting her.)

sandwichone123 · August 23

With my dh, loss of verbal skills was the very first symptom, years before we noticed anything else. It seems much more variable than many other symptoms, as far as how soon it presents. Some people apparently get pretty close to end of life still able to express themselves, even though their thoughts may be confused.

SDianeL · August 23

The term for language loss is Aphasia. It can be a symptom in the middle or later stages of dementia types, like Alzheimer's and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), as the disease progresses and affects brain areas responsible for speech and language. It’s impossible to know the progression since each person progresses differently.

H1235 · August 23

It’s my understanding that vascular dementia can affect any part of the brain at any time. Because of this symptoms can be different from person to person depending on the part of the brain involved.

Arrowhead · August 23

My wife went from struggling with words to only having a few sentences that she could say with meaning. She still tries to talk, but now she only makes sounds.

Decline in verbal ability?

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