When Jane Simpson's mother, then 91, started showing signs of memory loss in December 2007, Ms. Simpson thought age had finally caught up with her. "As this had been a gradual process, and considering her age, we were not unduly alarmed — just saddened that it seemed we were losing my mother mentally," she wrote in an e-mail to this blog.
But on a visit six months later, Ms. Simpson, a 61-year-old advertising copywriter in North Carolina, was struck by how much worse her mother's memory loss had become and by her confusion about everything happening around her.
Just typical 91-year-old behavior? Just the first signs of the inevitable slide toward dementia we all may face if we live long enough? Not at all.
Since the '70s, geriatric specialists have been aware of many unusual causes of memory loss, confusion and disorientation in older people. These include not just medical conditions ranging from urinary tract infection to hydrocephalus to the flu, but also side effects from many commonly used medications.
Often, doctors and family members disregard these symptoms, thinking that they are just signs of an inevitable age-related decline. But many cases of pseudo-senility, as it's called, are reversible — if they are caught early enough.
By coincidence, Ms. Simpson had recently read a short article in her local newspaper about the side effects in the elderly of a bladder control drug called Ditropan, which include severe memory loss. Her mother was taking Ditropan.
Ms. Simpson and her sister got their mother switched to an alternative bladder control drug, Enablex. Sure enough, her mental symptoms eased. "Within three months," Ms. Simpson recalled in her e-mail, "we felt that we had our mother back."
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