Changes in diagnosis

Many people struggle to get a diagnosis of dementia, either because they refuse to accept that there is nothing wrong, or because they cannot get beyond a family doctor.

The diagnosis is difficult anyway as there are so many variations.

 There may well be around 12 types of dementia, but within that there are over 120 variations, so no two people have the same problems and symptoms, even in the same type of dementia.

This starts with memory or cognitive problems, leading for full blown dementia.

However I have been totally amazed at the number of people, who were given a diagnosis of dementia, only to have it overturned later by a different consultant.

Some  of these have said that this re diagnosis was done in a very uncaring manner, as if they had been putting the illness on.

But who in their right mind would want dementia, let alone make it look as if you were struggling with an illness you do not have 

This must be very hard, when you still have the same problems, yet the liness name has changed.

The diagnosis of dementia  hits you hard when it happens, and takes da lot of getting used to it, but if it then gets reversed it must be extremely hard to accept.

However these days when there is uncertainty about the diagnosis people get the, diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment, where there are problems with the memory etc, but it may not lead to a formal diagnosis of dementia.

When some people are rediagnosed these days, they are labeled with mild cognitive impairment, simply because the brain has not deterriated as much as it should have done with full blown dementia, and this in turn leads to stress, after living with the term of dementia for perhaps four or five years.

Yet many of these people fight to keep themselves active which is good

It's a very strange illness, because I have hear stories of people living with mid to later stages of the illness, yet there was little evidence as far as the brain was concerned.

Before mine started I was very ill in hospital with viral pneumonia,  and then a year later things went from bad to worse. I never realised until much later that viral pneumonia had actually wiped much of my memory clean, and much of my job had disappeared, never to return. 

I gather that there are many illness which can mimic dementia, but I do not understand this at all.