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Has anyone had the opportunity to observe the reading and writing skills of someone with advanced Alzheimers? Is the patient who can no longer live alone still able to write legible sentences, use proper grammar and perfect punctuation? Just curious. Could someone be near end stage dementia, but, still able to write letters that are logical and without errors?

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I know it is one of the things they check in cognitive assessments, but I don't remember how they "grade" it, if you see what I mean.

My great aunt, by then in long term care, was asked to write a sentence of her own devising and she came up with "I am beginning to be hungry." (It had been a long morning!) She had no significant dementia, though.

My mother stopped being able to complete crosswords, and then not very long after her handwriting when a.w.o.l. too - she was repeating syllables within words and getting lost, it was incredibly demoralising for her. She had vascular dementia.

End stage dementia, no I wouldn't have thought a person would be able even to copy down words, let alone compose a sentence. You can probably check this point on line, though - Google cognitive assessments or something like that.
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I would agree with Countrymouse concerning end stage dmentia. My mum is in the late stages and she can write her name with difficulty, but that’s all.
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That has been my experience as well. They may be able to write their name, but, not complete and complex sentences. It really makes me wonder why someone would make this claim. It's a mystery.
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We moved my Mother in law into a memory center last Oct. Previously she was living alone with caretakers coming 2x a day.
We bought Christmas cards for her to just sign her name on. She couldn't do her first name in cursive(how she usually wrote it) - it's 5 letters long. She seemed to forget how the letters hooked together, it was tiny and cramped, completely unreadable.

I printed her name in big letters for her to look at to see if that would help her to print her name. She couldn't do that either, it came out tiny chicken scratch after the first letter.
She still seems to able to read, we bring her large print books and she can tell us what they are about. It takes her a lot longer to read a book now, but she seems to be reading them.

I find it hard to believe that someone with advanced Alz could write clearly and logically, at least from my experience with my mother in law.
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When my mom had a complete cognitive assessment, before her " big" stroke ( but after a small one, apparently) she was asked to write a sentence. She wrote something simple and coherent. But there was no period at the end.

12 years of Catholic School education and no period? That told me that some core of my mom's brain was now gone.
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So, would you expect it to be different if the person were typing on a computer? Would they be able to type complex sentences, make paragraphs and use really good grammar and punctuation? Would they be able to recount their day, describing their morning, lunch, afternoon, etc? Would they be able to explain what people had said to them, what they ate, how they were feeling, etc? I just think it's a stretch for the imagination for this to be possible, but.....I'm no expert.
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