US Woman Visits Doctor With Bad Mood Swings, Diagnosed With Dementia

A woman in the US has been diagnosed with dementia after visiting a doctor since she was worried about her mood swings. According to New York Post, Jana Nelson started developing a short temper and extreme mood swings in 2017 and her family pointed out her personality had changed. She said she was repeating the same questions, which made her think she had become forgetful. Ms Nelson also had trouble keeping her balance while walking, making decisions and controlling significant changes in her mood, the Post report further said.

"I had so much trouble regulating my emotions. I'd become so furious over things I usually wouldn't be angry about, like people correcting me if I said something wrong," the outlet quoted the 53-year-old woman as saying.

"My doctor doesn't see me living into my 60s and eventually I'm going to need round-the-clock care at home," she added.

A doctor she was consulting asked Ms Nelson to undergo neurological tests, suggesting she could be suffering from multiple sclerosis or a brain tumour.

But an MRI scan revealed Stage 4 dementia, which had progressed to Stage 5.

"You think you'd know when something was really wrong - but I didn't realise things were bad to this extent. I was really devastated," said Ms Nelson, who has two children and lives in Idaho Falls.

"The symptoms and tests were so scary. I'm a college-educated businesswoman, why couldn't I do simple math problems and name different colours?" she added.

Before the diagnosis, Ms Nelson thought of herself as a "very knowledgeable person" since she had studied psychology, a New Zealand Herald report said.

The intensive neurological tests went on for two days, a process that she found was demoralising and devastating". Ms Nelson said she couldn't complete easy tasks such as solving number problems, remembering flashing light patterns and naming different colours.

"I thought 'okay, it's dementia - but surely it must only be in the early stages'. But it wasn't, I have advanced dementia and a prognosis of 10 years to live," Ms Nelson said.

She noted that the doctor was "surprised" she was functioning as well as she was as there were people with "worse symptoms" at "earlier stages".

In the fifth stage of dementia, Ms Nelson is experiencing speech issue. She also has a "very limited vocabulary" and could develop disorientation along with pronounced memory loss.

Ms Nelson has been documenting her cognitive decline on TikTok, where she has found many middle-aged people suffering from similar conditions. She has made a few friends, who are using their experiences as a "roadmap" of what to expect.