US drafts Alzheimer's plan as families urge action

[RC]

Source: The Fargo Forum

Published September 13, 2011, 12:00 AM
By: Lauran Neergaard, AP Medical Writer, INFORUM

WASHINGTON – As her mother’s Alzheimer’s worsened over eight long years, so did Doreen Alfaro’s bills: The walker, then the wheelchair, then the hospital bed, then the diapers – and the caregivers hired for more and more hours a day so Alfaro could go to work and her elderly father could get some rest.

Alfaro and her husband sold their California house to raise money for her mother’s final at-home care. Six years later, the 58-year-old Alfaro wonders if she eventually develops Alzheimer’s, too: “What happens to my care? Where will I go?”

Dementia is poised to become a defining disease of the rapidly aging population – and a budget-busting one for Medicare, Medicaid and families. Now the Obama administration is developing the first National Alzheimer’s Plan, to combine research aimed at fighting the mind-destroying disease with help that caregivers need to stay afloat.

>SNIP<

An estimated 5.4 million Americans have Alz­hei­mer’s or similar dementias. It’s the sixth-leading killer. There is no cure; treatments only temporarily ease some symptoms. Barring a research breakthrough, those numbers will worsen steadily as the baby boomers gray: By 2050, anywhere from 13 million to 16 million Americans are projected to have Alzheimer’s, costing $1 trillion in medical and nursing home expenditures.

Read more: http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/333718/

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Alzheimer or Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease(Mad Cow), because the Bush administration refused to let producers test for Mad Cow? Seeing how it takes anywhere from 5 to 20 years to show up, depending on exposure, and the symptoms are the same, the increase of “Alzheimer” now is not surprising.
The death dealing Neo-Cons, the gift that keeps on giving.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

1. Great post...

... I sent the article to my family members, close family friends and those working as hospice and home care nurses. My mother suffered much in dealing with my grandpa's Alzheimers. He was fit as a fiddle but suffered dementia to the point of punching a lady in the mouth for "not shutting up", while in the nursing home, and it cost over $300,000 a year out of the estate (my grandpa was a 180 acre brown dirt cowboy w/45 head of dairy cows he milked twice a day until the day he retired "into town" 1978). And this went on for nearly 10 years.

To give an example to those unexperienced with Alzheimers afflicted relatives, when my grandma died of diabetes complications (they both were in the same nursing home at the same time), my mother told grandpa, "Dad, your wife died", he responded, "oh, that's too, bad". He didn't even realize it was his wife.

It is tough enough the way it is for families to deal with this affliction being suffered by a loved one, hopefully this program will be funded so others do not have to face this ordeal.

[area51]

2. Alzheimer's

If you download and run the Stanford University's Folding at Home program, their research can help benefit Alzheimer's research.

"We have many calculations being performed on {Alzheimer's Disease}. Our primary goals are the prediction of AD aggregate structure for rational drug design approaches as well as further insight into how AD aggregates form kinetically (hopefully paving the way for a method to stop the AD aggregate formation)."

DU has a group of volunteers: 48157.

[mainer]

3. We need a national war on Alzheimer's Disease

There would be real economic benefits to that sort of war, at least.