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Still figuring out this site...Update on my mother and the 180 degree change.More blood work will be done today. Should the pancreatitis levels go higher, an ultrasound is the next step. But, what's after? The doctor said any infection or pain can cause alzheimers/dementia to progress faster, I guess that was why my mother did a 180 degree turn....poor mom...

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I'm feeling sorry for you both. This is hard on your mom and hard for you to watch.

Anything that stresses the body or mind can worsening AD. My mother-in-law survived a terrible bout of pneumonia but she came out of far worse cognitively than she did before the illness. Hospitalization can really speed up the decline.

Pancreatitis is serious in an otherwise healthy person. The fact that this had made your mother's AD worse is, sadly, not surprising.

Stick with the site. You'll find many people who can commiserate and give you the advantage of their own experiences.

Take care,
Carol
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How Boy, Juddha! Pancreatitis is no fun at all. When my mother was 84 she had pancreatitis and I have never seen her in such pain. She hates to take medicine but she was begging for more and more when I got her to the emergency room. Ended up she had a bad gall bladder with gall stones, so they scheduled surgery pretty quickly to remove it all. BUT during the gallbladder surgery they found out that the stone that caused the pancreatitis was actually stuck in her pancreas--in a duct. The only places in the country who had the capability to remove the stone were Virginia Mason in Seattle and Johns Hopkins. Thankfully we were within driving distance of Seattle. At any rate, she was in the hospital for about 10 days after the gall bladder surgery and then we had to wait 6 weeks to have the pancreatic stone, stuck in a duct, removed. She made the decision to have the procedure and it went well. She only had to stay overnight for that one. Our family doctor indicated that some people have chronic pancreatitis and it can be ok or life threatening. Thankfully, my mother has not had an episode since then, and it has been five years. I wish you well, and hope the pain is not too intense for your mother (or you!)
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Pancreatitis is treated by no food no water for a period of 8-10 days. They give only intervenis fluids nothing by mouth. It is very very painful and requires pain medication to manage the pain. If they are giving pain meds that can most certinally cause mental issues. Two main causes of pancreatitis are alchol abuse and gall stones. If they havent done an ultrasound of gallbladder they should. If stones are present they will want to remove. If they dont remove it will come back sometime in near future.
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Having had this experience with my husband, unless the doctors get the pancreatitis under control, surgery is next, but they may think her immune system would not handle the surgery. Prepare yourself for the worse.
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Chappy, sorry to hear about your Mom.... yes, an infection or pain can have some baring on dementia, and sometimes the patients goes back to how they were doing prior to the infection or pain, sometimes not.

As for pancreatitis, sorry, there might be a couple of doctors who are caregivers on this site, but for the rest of us, we just cannot answer that question.
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I had pancreatitus once, about 40 years ago. I don't know a lot of the technical details, but it is obviously treatable -- I'm still here!

Each time my husband had some kind of an illness -- infection, cough, constipation -- just about anything his dementia symptoms got more pronounced. If it was something the required followup care, the therapists always told me he was at a new level and would not return to his pre-illness level of functioning. Each time they were wrong. Unfortunately the recovery took longer than the therapy so they never were around long enough to see how wrong they were.

Poor mom, indeed. Hugs to her and to you. Like so many aspects of dementia, what happens next is a wait-and-see situation. When they find the cause of the pancreatitis they'll treat it. When she is back in good health on that score you'll find out if her dementia symptoms return to former baseline or not.
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Pancreatitis is the condition, but what levels are high? Read the lab results.
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I'd go to a Naturopath and see what supplements or plan might be useful now or after the crisis.
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Any kind of metabolic imbalance in the body will exacerbate the neurological condition...alzheimers, other dementia, parkinson's, etc. While in a healthy person it would take a moderate to high level imbalance before things start acting up, in a person with a neurological condition, even border line levels can worsen the neurogical condition. So in your mother's case even if her enzyme levels could be border line high, they need to start treating her and not wait for them to get higher, or the window for recuperation will be much longer for her the frailer she gets, and time is of essence. So, I would strongly encourage you to push the doctors to get on with all diagnostics and start treatment as soon as they find out what's causing the inflammation.
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Chappy how is mom doing now that its been four days and change in panc enzyme levels?
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