Support Group for Those of Us Living With Mild Dementia

@ann80 You poor thing! That’s awful! Here I thought we oldsters were pretty safe from that type of assault. Was it the delivery guy did it?

@susanejw Thank you! No it was a teenager that was running from the police and ran in my house while I was carrying in grociers.. He was 6/4 I'm 5 feet. The judge said he is pure evil and a threat to society. If not for God I would be dead .

I have read Still Alice twice and watched the movie once very good.

@SusanEllen66 I have been having a problem with housekeeping too. In my younger days I cleaned every week, with three little ones running around, now over the years with no kids and just husband and I rattling around, have lost all motivation and not caring about it (husband did vacuuming and other heavy work till he fell ill). I was embarrassed at the condition of our house when friends dropped in recently, so now I have hired a cleaning lady to come in once a month (it’s all we can afford!) and am going to find a way to fit that expense into our budget! It was such a mood lifter to go out for a couple of hours and return to a clean house!

@johnbishop

That is great for prevention. Those of us who already have dementia find it absolutely frustrating when we try to learn something new. Our brains simply cannot handle the needed concentration when learning new things.

@alju

I was diagnosed with MCI in April 2026. The only cognitive med I'm taking is donepezil (Aricept). I've been taking 5mg daily for about 3 weeks. For the last few days, I've seen an improvement in my memory. It's not a big improvement, but it's noticeable. 2-3 times a day I easily remember something I wouldn’t have remembered before. But there are still dozens of things I can't remember.

I can increase to the standard 10mg dose in 1-3 weeks. Interestingly donepezil has been an Alzheimer’s drug for 30 years. In the US it is the longest-established Alzheimer’s medication that remains in routine use. Two similar other acetylcholinesterase inhibitor drugs are Rivastigmine (Exelon) and Galantamine (Razadyne). My MD confirms that donepezil has been around the longest and is the safest.

One great thing is that donepezil is one of the least expensive of any prescription drugs, not just Alzheimer’s drugs. It should be free with any reasonable insurance plan. But even without insurance, it should only cost about $10/month out of pocket for a daily 10mg dose. I wouldn't bother with the original brand name Aricept. It can be really, really expensive.

Here's what ChatGPT 5.5 Medium says: "Donepezil is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. It increases the availability of acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter important for attention, learning, encoding new information, and retrieving information already stored.
A responder may notice things such as: holding onto a thought or intention longer; remembering recent conversations or requests more reliably; less frequently losing track of what they were doing; greater mental clarity or alertness; easier word retrieval; better concentration and organization; fewer episodes in which information disappears almost immediately."

@SusanEllen66
Did you ever locate a group for MCI? I wish we could find one.