End of Life Decisions for Advanced Alzheimer’s Patients

Alzheimer’s can be a very difficult disease for families to deal with as we slowly watch our loved ones slip away from us until they do not even know us.  We watch a loving parent or spouse gradually lose their thinking, remembering, and reasoning abilities, until at the very end, no longer even respond to their name. 

As a person with Alzheimer’s can live for years, we sometimes forget that it is a terminal disease with no cure.  In addition this may mean that at a certain point families are faced with difficult end-of-life decisions, and these decisions sometime have to be made without knowing our loved one’s direct wishes. 

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) has published some guidelines to help families traverse through these challenging issues.  One of their foremost recommendations is to have this conversation with mom or dad or a spouse early-on, before the disease takes away their ability to seriously weigh in on their feelings regarding end-of-life decisions.  The article relates a story about a woman in the later stages of Alzheimer’s who ended up with pneumonia.  Without her mother being able to communicate any longer, the daughter did not know what her mother’s wishes were in regards to feeding tubes and antibiotics to treat the illness.  

Other decisions regarding the care of those with Alzheimer’s include whether to continue medications to treat medical conditions or to have surgery in the end stages of the disease or to just provide palliative care.  Thus family members must weigh quality of life with quantity of life.  The NIA reports that the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease include some of the following:  being unable to move around on one’s own, being unable to speak or make oneself understood, and eating problems such as difficulty swallowing.   

If you need memory care for a loved one suffering from Alzheimer’s or another form of dementia, we invite you to consider MorningStar at Englefield Green.  We proudly and lovingly provide compassionate care from the onset of the disease to the very most advanced stages.  Please visit our website to learn more.

MorningStar at Englefield Green embodies the very best in senior living with a distinct mission statement of “to honor, to serve, to invest” that sets us apart from other senior living communities.  Amidst a beautiful home-like setting, we provide care based on honoring God, valuing seniors and investing in a staff with a felt calling to serve.  Please contact us for information on one of Boise’s most trusted Alzheimer’s care homes. 

Source: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/end-life-care-people-dementia