Imagine yourself with dementia or Alzheimer's, beginning to get confused and disoriented in a world that no longer makes much sense. Your daughter – you do still recognize her as your daughter – takes you to an appointment to get an exam, because your glasses seem to only make the world more confusing.
You are helped into a chair and the doctor covers one of your eyes and asks what letters you see. What is a letter, you think, and why is he covering my face? You start to squirm and then push him away. You get more confused and frightened because you don't know what they want with you.
This happens, my friends. When I took my dad to the eye doctor because he still liked to try to read but his glasses were wrong for him, he responded in such a way. He happened to be having one of his worst days and thought the doctor was trying to kill him.
Needless to say, that was our last attempt at a new prescription. We had a new pair of glasses made with lighter frames to help them stay on his thinning face, but we couldn't get a good test done.
Teeth were another huge issue. Dad had worn dentures for many decades. He had little bone left to support the dentures, but I kept "gluing them in" with a tooth bonding cream. However, he managed to lose his lower plate. This is common in nursing homes, since elders will often take out an uncomfortable plate when they eat. Then, if the denture is not noticed, it will go in the garbage with the leftover food. In Dad's case, I believe he may have gotten annoyed with his denture and thrown it in his own garbage can. Whatever the reason, it could not be found, so off to the dentist we went.
The dentist was kind, and Dad was in better spirits than the day of the eye exam. However, the dentist was frank in telling me that there wasn't enough bone to fit new dentures. Again we were stuck with buying a copy of the old ones, and continued the icky process of gluing in poor Dad's teeth. The oozing pink stuff still haunts me, as we had to use so much it must have felt dreadful to him. Still, we had no choice. This was the best I could do.