Can you die from dementia?

[CTyankee]

If so, how does it cause death to occur?

I'm asking because I am mourning the death of a wonderful man who developed dementia and after 18 days in the hospital passed away.

[Dave in VA]

1. Our experience

is with both our mothers. They both had a medical power of attorney.

Wife's mother died as a result of her dementia by being unable to swallow and her POA stated no feeding tube if it was not going to result her her condition improving.

My mother died as a result of her anxiety getting so extreme that her heart rate was over 300 bpm and finally gave out.

Don't know if this helps in your situation.

Sorry for your loss.

[Ocelot II]

3. Dementia can cause a decline in various ways that can be fatal.

Or, the dementia can be caused by an underlying condition such as strokes or other brain damage, that weaken the person and cause their death.

[CTyankee]

2. here is background for this post

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10182039432

[demosincebirth]

4. It takes ( sad to say ) years to die from Alzheimer's

[surfered]

5. My mother died from dementia.

From what I’ve read, it’s usually from some underlying condition the weakened body can no longer fend off.

[LiberalFighter]

6. Likely a secondary cause

[LakeArenal]

7. My mom quit eating and went into a fetal position.

[murielm99]

8. One of my friends went to the nursing home

every day to feed dinner to her sister. Her sister had forgotten how to feed herself. Eventually, the sister refused food and died.

[LakeArenal]

10. Exactly. My dad visited three times a day.

She just quit.

[Eugene]

9. From my family's experience...

Late stage dementia led to decline and loss of motor functions,
especially the ability to eat. Infection, pneumonia and sepsis followed.

[Prairie_Seagull]

11. Sister died at 55 from LPPA (a type of dementia)

Logopenic primary progressive aphasia. I think dementia is a bit of a catch all. Her doc said she just gave up and stopped breathing. I believe he was just being kind I guess, but there it is.

[Niagara]

12. My grandmother succumbed to dementia this past April

In the end, the progression of dementia causes swallowing difficulties, whether it's choking, aspiration, dehydration or malnutrition. Aspiration can cause pneumonia.


Even though my grandmother was already in a nursing facility, hospice came to check on her on the daily as she declined from dementia.


I'm sorry about your beloved loss, CTyankee.

[CountAllVotes]

13. Yes

My husband died from dementia.

It was a rough way to go!

[deRien]

14. My mother-in-law

was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. It is my understanding that you loose the ability to do anything like read, do math, button/zip clothes, walk, eat, swallow, recognize family/friends because these are all things that you do automatically but are sequential. She fell and broke her hip which led to her death.

[CountAllVotes]

15. That is what happened to my late husband

He was is bad shape and fell and broke his hip.

He couldn't have weighed more than 110 lbs. at that point as he couldn't eat or swallow; he had no appetite.

The greedy doctors decided to operate on the broken hip and when he came to, he couldn't breathe or swallow.

It was off to hospice for $500/day until he died about a week later.

Hell of a way to go, that's all I can say.

[deRien]

16. We were given the

choice of surgery. It was either sit in pain in a wheelchair or have surgery and be pushed down the dementia road. The hospital lost her teeth so she was unable to eat. It took about 7 weeks for her to pass away. Skeletal thin also. I'm sorry for your loss. It is so hard to watch and wait as a loved one passes.

[CountAllVotes]

17. I left at the end

Hospice called and told me to come there ASAP.

So, off I went and there he was in a bed going up and and down, up and down non-stop.

I couldn't just sit there and watch that and he was out of it in the head. He had no idea I was there.

So, I left.

He died a few hours later.

What a hell I have been through since he died.

[deRien]

19. My sister-in-law

spent a couple of hours with her mom then left. We got a call at 6:15 am that she had passed. She hadn't been conscious for a while but I think she was waiting for her daughter to come. Be kind to yourself ~ many times a person waits for someone to come or maybe in your case to leave. A hospice nurse told us about a woman who gathered all her family around her then told them to go have dinner. She died shortly after they left. I'm so sorry that you are living in "hell" since he passed. Do you have someone to share your feelings with? Or grieve counseling?

[CountAllVotes]

20. My late husband had 39 nieces and nephews & one living sister

None of them did jack shit.

Despicable lot.

I learned.

Now the Area One on Aging is trying to get me to take in a roommate, something I am not keen on at all.

I prefer been a cat lady.

[deRien]

21. Cats are

good ~ unknown roommates not so much...

[CountAllVotes]

22. Exactly!

You never know who you will end up with and it isn't easy to get rid of one of them.

I was not a good roommate to have in my college years, I know that much!

[mgardener]

26. We were with my mom

For a day and a half leaving for meals.
She appeared stable BP etc so we went home to sleep and return the next day.

Just gotten in bed when we got the call that she had died.
Went back into NYC to say goodbye.
The Dr told us she had seen it before where people wait to be alone to die.
I was sad that she died alone, but we did what we thought was best at the time.

I am so sorry.

[CountAllVotes]

27. It was the saddest moment in my life

Last edited Wed Jul 31, 2024, 01:23 PM - Edit history (1)

I was not prepared for his death. He wasn't either.

It has left me alone with nothing for a 36 year marriage. I get $23 a month in food stamps, that is it.

Being I get more on Social Security than he did ($1201.00 a month!), that is what I still get. His extra $500 a month was a lot more helpful than I realized it was.

I'm a mess and its been 26+ months since he died.

Incidents that occurred have a way of burning scars into your brain that never heal.

He'd been sick for many years in hindsight. It was easier to turn a blind eye to the situation because he was in total denial.

I don't know how I lived through it really.

I have the house still but I don't know if I'll be able to hang-on to it being my income is so low and I got into a bad car accident last year in Sept. which totaled my car out.

I could find no help with transportation needs so I bought a used car and the dealer that sold it to me lied and misrepresented it. It was in two head on collisions, the first of which totaled it out and they patched it up and sold it to someone else that got into a second head-on collision. Needless to say, the car is a nightmare and I am in a lawsuit because of it. The payments are over $400 a month. Ugh.

I don't know what I will do as I burned through a lot of money from 2022 ----> present.

Thank you for your kind words. They mean a lot to me.

Hang-in there yourself!

[GumboYaYa]

28. My father-in-law was at the end of his life.

He had dementia and a bunch of other health issues. We were visiting. He tapped my wife on the hand and said, it is time for you to go. He died within an hour after we left.

[TexasBushwhacker]

29. It's called "terminal restlessness"

It's like the body's last surge of energy, tryin myg to survive. It's very common and hard to witness.

[CountAllVotes]

30. No one could tell me what was going on

It was so confusing.

No one there could tell me a thing about what happened.

Was there a name for this?

It was like watching someone doing sit-ups really fast.

It was horrible.

I'm pretty sure he had no idea I was there as in the end he was almost deaf and had some eye sight left in one eye.

It has left me behind as a devastated mess as I was not prepared for any of it, much less this part at the end.

Was I wrong to opt to just get up and leave like I did?

I don't know and I'll never know.

Thank you btw.

[TexasBushwhacker]

31. You don't know what you can handle

until you have to handle it. Shame on the hospital/hospice workers for not telling you what was going on. My mother had it about 2 days before she died. Her cancer was in her bones and brain, but she was still trying to get out of bed even through she risked fracturing her bones. Fortunately, I knew what it was. They could have sedated your dad.

[CountAllVotes]

32. It was my husband

He was 20 years older than I am, 85 years old when he died. He had tried to escape from that god awful place. I asked them why they did not sedate him! They said they did!

Yeah right!

They offered me grief counseling for a brief time but they didn't seem to know anything either.

They got their $500 a day out of me and I've never had anything else to do with this place.

I'm sorry to read about your dear mother. It sounds like you've been through hell too.

[hlthe2b]

18. Leading cause of death is aspiration pneumonia (brain damage leading to swallowing & other neuro-affective difficulties)

Blood clots (pulmonary emboli), sepsis (secondary to aspiration pneumonia, untreated/poorly treated bed sores or urinary tract infections, etc.), and fatal falls (head trauma/subdural hematomas) are also commonly associated causes of death.

Alzheimer's is, after all a leading cause of brain damage in the elderly. So its effects also depend on the areas in which leading damage occurs. Someone upstream mentioned overwhelming "stress" leading to uncontrolled heart rates in excess of 300 bpm. While I don't doubt that the patient was highly agitated, the (tachycardia) run of rapid heart rate most likely occurred as a result of damage to the autonomic nervous system and its feedback regulatory loops or an increase in specific neurochemicals--often independent of major primary heart disease.

[AllaN01Bear]

23. i had 2 friends die from that horrible thing.:(

[Skittles]

24. it's what killed AC/DC guitarist Malcolm Young

he was only 64

here's an article about dementia

https://www.neurology.columbia.edu/news/understanding-how-dementia-causes-death-0

[CTyankee]

25. Thank you. That is so helpful!

[agalisgv]

33. Yes

Unfortunately. Yes.

[GusBob]

34. I believe the technical term is

"failure to thrive"

that's what they put on my dad's death certificate