Lewy Body Dementia
I read an intriguing article in The Sunday Times recently which focused on the sad death of the comedian Robin Williams who took his own life in August 2014.
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/newsreview/features/article1590844.ece
Now apart from my fondness for Williams and his great body of work cover the years, the other thing that really interested me was the fact that the comedian appears to have been misdiagnosed as suffering from Parkinson's Disease.
When according to the ST article Williams was more likely to have been afflicted by a form of dementia, known as LBD (Lewy Body Dementia), a degenerative condition which causes hallucinations along with other Parkinson-like symptoms.
The reason for my intrigue is that my dear Mum was diagnosed with Parkinson's many years ago, but before she died the diagnosis was changed to one of Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia with suspected LDB which rang true of course because in the last years of her life my mother experienced very vivid hallucinations.
The hallucinations started out benignly enough with visions of the family growing and my dad, who was long dead, although they got worse as my Mum thought of herself as 14 years old again, getting up at 6am in the morning before setting off for Glasgow where she had a job as a seamstress.
In those days, education and schooling for young girls stopped at age 14 whereas young boys continued at school until 16.
Anyway the point is that the hallucinations became dangerous and that was the point that 24 hour care became necessary, but having read the article about Robin Williams I am troubled by the fact that my Mum was receiving Parkinson's medication for years that was probably doing her more harm rather than good.
The ST article said that a definite diagnosis of LBD can only be made after death because only an autopsy can tell for that the Lewy bodies (which seem to cause the hallucinations) exist for sure within a person's brain.
Which I find rather odd I have to say because with all the fancy medical scanners available these days, you would have thought one was sophisticated enough to show the presence of the tiny 'clumps' of matter within the brain that seem to cause LBD.
My Mum had good days and and bad days right to the end, but she always took a great interest in the work I was doing, in particular the big, ongoing battle for equal pay with Action 4 Equality Scotland because, in her time, my Mum did a variety of low paid jobs with her own local council.
No one knows for sure, of course, but the thrust of The Sunday Times article is that LBD played a big part in Robin Williams' suicide and I imagine that if my Mum could have I'm pretty certain she would have brought her own life to a different, more peaceful end as well.
