When we're finding out what the cause of a loved one's dementia may be, what form of dementia it is, the best thing that we can do is take that person to a place that specializes in disorders related to aging. I have heard countless accounts of someone taking a loved one who they know is confused to a family physician they've had for years. And the family physician says, Oh, they seem fine. Well, that's because within the first like 10 to 15 minutes of a conversation, a lot of people with earlier stages of dementia are able to quote unquote, fool doctors. And it's not that hard to answer questions about, you know, how you're feeling that day or what the weather is. Those are pretty normal things we learned to talk about from the time when we learned to speak.

What we need to look into is the stuff that's on this list. So here The test that should be run when we're trying to figure out what form of dementia someone has a brain scan, an MRI and fMRI PET scan a CAT scan any or multiple of these cognitive testing and I will go over this in a minute. Family History questions. So these are things that actually the doctors, social workers psychologists will ask you about as the caregiver questions about changes in your loved ones behavior. Again, these are questions that will come to you as the caregiver. So feel free to bring someone else with you when you go to get an evaluation.

A gait evaluation for your loved one with dementia. So the watch them walk. That's what a gait is watching them walk and seeing how they look when they're moving. physical exam, a blood draw probably a medication evaluation, so be sure to bring a list of their current medications. Okay, this is what's called the clock draw test. This is an example of some of the cognitive testing that your loved one will go through.

Now this is the kind of test that they'll do when they go to a place that is designed to test for dementia. Some of the best places to go have all the resources you need at once. My favorite examples are from the state where I currently live, which is Pennsylvania. So when I in 2012, when I was still in graduate school, I went home for the summer. And my family lives in South Jersey, so not too far from South Jersey is Philly. I went into Philly every day, and interned at Penn memory center in at the University of Pennsylvania, which is a great school and went in there did my internship and tested people what's called psychometric testing for different forms of dementia.

So I was in charge All the cognitive testing questions, and one of them was what's called the clock draw test, you get the participant who comes in your room to draw a clock. Seems simple, but you'd be very surprised with some of the answers that come up. Here's an example of some of the answers that do come up. Right? So this blocks, okay, we wouldn't take off very many points for this. This block doesn't have a number.

So we're going to take off a lot of points for this. Not really sure you know what the marking is not even a very good circle. Over here, we've got numbers outside of the circle, we've got two tabs, we've got an extra one. And then over here, all the numbers are backwards and the middle so you can see there, you know, we would lose some points here, you're the person taking the test will lose some points. Based on what this clock these clocks look like. Now, here and this I'm going to attach this as well so you can look at it more in depth.

Cognitive testing examples. So this is actually examples of what your loved one would go through. So this is from the specifically this is from the pen memory center, I believe. So they asked you their love when these questions, What year is it? What's the season and new grade based on that? We asked them to spell the world, the word world backwards.

We have them repeat three words. This is a really simple test the MMSE the mini mental status exam is a really simple test that is done in hospitals, it's meant to be quick, it's meant to be pretty easy to pass. It doesn't really tell us too much. Okay. So we got to go through past the MMSE and go into some tougher tests to really find out more about somebody's cognitive health. And here's where we would score stuff.

Here's some of the tests they do a clock draw test, like I mentioned, word list, delayed recall. So giving somebody a list of words and then waiting a little bit and asking them about it. Then later on, We can ask them what words they recognize from the list, lexical fluency name, every word you can think of that starts with an F. Okay? semantic fluency name, every animal you can think of Boston naming test, which is essentially a book of pictures to go through the book of pictures. And the person tells us what the picture is of trail making test, which I will show you. This is something that they may ask the participant or they may ask you as a family member, probably the psychologist or social worker, we'll go over the GDS, the geriatric depression scale.

And you can see some of these questions. Gonna give you an idea of if there's any depression issues. pretty important to find out. Here, these are probably some questions that they ask you. This is also something good to keep in mind. We'll go over a little bit more later in this class.

ADL activities of daily living, finding out what their needs are feeding toileting, dressing, grooming, ambulation bathing, that can really give you an idea of where they're at. And then the ID at iadls instrumental activities of daily living, how is their abilities a telephone shopping, fruit, food preparation, housekeeping, you know, this is going to give you give us an idea if we're doing the testing where they're at. So here's what I mentioned earlier. This is called the trail making test. This looks crazy. I know but it's actually quite simple.

You start at one, you go to a, you go from A to two, you go from two to B, you go from B to three, you get it. So you're going number letter number letter. We also have one that's all numbers. You have one that's all letters. And it is surprisingly challenging. Especially If you have a cognitive issue, it is timed as well see this little lat dashes, that's where somebody made a mistake.

Okay? Word List memory test. I'm going to show you 10 printed words, read each word out loud as I show it to you later, I will ask you to recall all 10 words. Just such short term memory, and then a little bit of, you know, waiting on that short term memory, seeing if it lasts a little bit longer. The Boston naming test literally pictures of typical items, a whistle, a pencil, octopus, pretzel, and asking, What is this? If they don't get it, you can say it starts with a P. Okay?

If they still don't get it, it's something to eat. All right. So these are some examples of some of the tests that you may see, or that your loved one may see. Usually, if somebody goes in to get this testing done, it's about a half of the day. Usually a few hours. But it is I think necessary.

I think it's great to get an accurate diagnosis. Now if your loved ones in a really advanced stage of dementia, I wouldn't worry about it. Okay. But if they're in an earlier stage and you kind of want to know what's happening, yeah, I would definitely recommend getting the diagnosis.