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That is a good question. Never thought of that. All I can say, there is jo rhyme or reason to Dementia. It being unpredictable is why I could not deal with it.
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Reply to JoAnn29
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We want to make sense out of things, that's our nature; but there is no sense to be made out of dementia. What you are referring to happens with my 91 YO dad - he will ask the same question (especially about the weather, or about a doctor appointment or about something he 'heard') as much as 6 times or more within 15 minutes. Not only did he not retain the answer, he had no idea he'd been repeatedly asking the question. Still does this to some degree; worse some days than others. But you just have to keep reminding yourself that your loved one has a broken brain, and he or she is not doing any of this on purpose. It is very tiring for the one doing the caregiving, though.
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Reply to YaYa79
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Their repetitive behavior comes from a different part of the brain.
It is not rationally thought out, but a manifestation of obsessive/compulsive behavior such as you might see with someone with OCD who is constantly returning to be sure that the stove is off and the door is locked. So that is to say it comes from irrational thinking and from another more primitive part of the brain.

You can study the brain forever. Oliver Sack, the neuroscientist did, and wrote fascinating book after book about the brain, what we don't know, what we know, and how quickly we are learning.

When I first went into nursing we called the aging diseases we now recognize as Alzheimer's, Lewy's, frontotemporal, vacular and a host of others only one word----that word was senile. Autism wasn't really recognized as anything but one word before the 70s. We now know there is a whole host of different disorders on the spectrum. We don't know much. We are a curious animal. We are learning, but wasn't all that long ago we thought the world was flat.
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