Aricept: to take or not to take?

My mom started on aricept when she was 1st diagnosed...and very early stage. She still owned her home and functioned quite well. She stayed on it for at least 10 years maybe more, and very slowly started to decline, 1st into independent living, then addition of caregivers for a few hours a day. At 92 shes now in a NH, doesn’t exhibit any extreme or bad behaviors, but short term memory is almost zero. She had no side effects from it all those years. But I can’t say if her very slow progression was the result of it, or that’s just how she would have progressed anyway.

It depends on how the aricipt helps. Remember the objective is to keep them comfortable. I don't believe, personally, that there really is such a thing as a memory enhancer, there is no baseline to determine if long term use helps anything. Aricept was not taken by mom, it caused terrible diarrhea. She did take namenda. Who knows if it helped? It did not stop the progression, it did not seem to help her memory, the decline and lost memories and lives continued to be more loss each day.

my dad took Aricept. i cant say when he started. he probably took for about 8 years?

maybe from age 85 to age 93(died) - i believe he also took namenda

i think he had a normal alzheimers decline. he had other health ailments too, so whether he died from alzheimers or just from 'age' ...idk. I mean his death cert said end stage dementia(?) Regardless i will say it was a slow depressing decline....

my mom has dementia also. started symptoms around 2010? and now she is pretty bad. her memory is about 10 seconds +/-

she saw a geriatric dr back in November 2017. But she did NOT start my mom on any Alzheimer drug. Perhaps its because she is ALREADY advanced.

maybe the drug could help slow down someone who is otherwise healthy and is of a younger age.

edit - for my dad, once i could tell he had memory problem, he never got better. he always got worse. so it was a long years of slow going down hill

Studies have not shown favorable results.
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/mental-cognitive-enhancement-medications-dont-slow-mental-decline-091713
It did nothing at all for our LO with Alzheimer's and her husband won't take her off it because he really, reeaally wants a pill to fix this.