[You Dirty Rats]

Heart-breaking all right. I am going to visit my father in Miami next weekend. He can't recognize anyone, and is only 74.

There may be a worse disease out there, but I haven't experienced it in my family.

[Mr. Jeeves]

I think paranoid-delusional disorders are even worse. My mother believed for most of her life that everyone was spying on her and out to get her, and she was abusive toward everyone who tried to explain otherwise. She drove away every friend and relative she had (except me - I was probably just too stupid to give up on her). Though there are medications to treat such conditions, just try getting a paranoid to take one. As long as she was able to fool the doctor into thinking she was rational (which she was, about half the time) then nothing could be done.

Eventually, her paranoia did her in - she didn't follow her doctor's instructions to deal with her congestive heart failure, and died last year at 70. It sounds cruel to say it was a relief to everyone in the family...but it was.

[billhilly]

God bless you and your father. My mother suffered from that hideous disease for the last ten years of her life.

[lonestar]

My 87 year old mother is sitting behind me right now, talking to her brother who has been dead three years. She started having symptoms about 9 years ago.

We activated the alarm system to beep when a door is opened about 4 years ago. She doesn't try to leave anymore. She would sneak out and sit in the car.

She is happy. Doesn't have a care in the world. Doesn't remember her husband of 50 years--which seems to be what triggered it.

We take it one day at a time. I have help during the day but it is confining at night because nobody wants to work for an hour or two.