It’s important to diagnose Alzheimer's early because one of the important things that we have to offer people is planning. When their judgment is still good, when their insight is still good, we can ask them lots of questions about what they would want or not want as the disease progresses. This is extremely important to families.
A good example I can give was someone that I've been following for about seven years. About seven years ago, we had this conversation with the son who was durable power of attorney for healthcare. The son was going to be the surrogate decision maker when the time came. The conversation that we had back then was feeding tube, absolutely not, being on a ventilator, absolutely not. If I break my hip and it hurts a lot, fix it. If I get pneumonia and I look pretty comfortable, you can give me morphine. Don’t put me in a hospital. Give me morphine. Give me hospice. It takes such a burden off the family to know what people want at the end of life.
Before that, lots of other good things can be done in terms of planning. For instance, and this is almost a poster child for the way you should do it, dad says, “Son, when you think I can’t drive anymore, just tell me and take my keys away. When you think I can’t manage my finances anymore, just tell me and I’ll sign a paper that says you can do it and I’ll sign that paper right now. If a doctor or somebody else says that I can’t handle it anymore, then you take over.” That kind of planning is really important.
