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My mom has Medi-care with Kaiser.
the geriatric dr. and her staff were very helpful and understanding. where it seemed the primary dr didn't really get "into" the dementia issue.
dr said mom had moderate Alzheimer's. saying since the symptoms started back in 2010(?) and it was slow moving.
but my mom was starting to say crazy things and making up stuff. (and repeating over and over)
dr only gave my mom low dose of Citalopram(celexa) which is for antidepressant/mood disorder. It did seem to help and the upsetting stories stop for the most part. (but didn't offer any alz RX, which was ok by me)
they also gave my mom a caseworker to monitor any changes. so any thing that comes up I let her know about it. and she calls maybe once a month.
my dad who passed away in 2015 was on Namenda and Aricept. (one or another or both cant recall) but he took that for years even before I could tell he had problems.
seems to me, his dementia progressed slowly over close to 10 years (guessing)
as far as I can tell im not sure it made any difference. once he was really bad towards the end, dr gave him an anti psychotic drug to calm him down.
I should clarify she hasn’t been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
To me, that says it doesn't work, progressing 2 stages in 18 months.
She's still on it, why I don't know. She does not remember anything of her life and lives in a "void". She's 95-1/2 years old and is holding at stage 6.
How do you REALLY evaluate a dementia medication? Since we have no idea how fast the dementia will progress, there is no hard core "evidence" that the medications actually work.