One thing Joe Biden is good at is making up words. We’ve seen him do it many times. And it’s not because of some “childhood stutter,” which was an excuse so lame, that even Dems and the media stopped using it. In the video I am going to share with you, Biden looks lost, and he’s speaking “gibberish” again, or making up words. I am going to give you my opinion of what’s going on. Now, before I do, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not a doctor, and the only experience I have dealing with dementia or Alzheimer’s patients is from my grandmother, who lived with me and my family for many years, throughout all the stages of her Alzheimer’s, and up until she passed away. I am no expert on it, but after living with a disease every day for a huge chunk of your life, you definitely have a different type of understanding of it.
And one thing to note is that dementia is an umbrella term for symptoms associated with brain damage caused by disease. I don’t know what’s ailing Joe, so “dementia” is what I call it. We knew my grandmother had Alzheimer’s.
So, based on all that, and with all disclaimers in place, this is what I think is happening to Joe.
One thing we notice in that video is Joe’s blank stare. He hardly blinks, and his face looks frozen. There’s no personality on his face, no expression to match the words. It looks stiff and robotic.
That happens a lot with dementia patients, mostly folks with Alzheimer’s:
Older people who have “mental lapses,” or times when their thinking seems disorganized or illogical or when they stare into space, may be more likely to have Alzheimer’s disease than people who do not have these lapses, according to a study published in the January 19, 2010, print issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. These mental lapses, also called cognitive fluctuations, are common in a type of dementia called dementia with Lewy bodies, but researchers previously did not know how frequently they occurred in people with Alzheimer’s disease and, equally important, what effect fluctuations might have on their thinking abilities or assessment scores. The study involved 511 people with an average age of 78. Researchers interviewed the participant and a family member, evaluated the participants for dementia and tested their memory and thinking skills. People with three or four of the following symptoms met the criteria for having mental lapses: • Feeling drowsy or lethargic all the time or several times per day despite getting enough sleep the night before • Sleeping two or more hours before 7 p.m. • Having times when the person’s flow of ideas seems disorganized, unclear, or not logical • Staring into space for long periods
And as for the gibberish we see Joe doing all the time. That’s also a symptom of dementia.
It’s a challenge to communicate effectively when you don’t speak the same language as the ones you are talking with, wouldn’t you agree?
For those with a Dementia diagnosis, it’s not uncommon for language disruptions to occur. The early signs of pending compromise tends to be hesitation or mispronouncing words that were normally familiar.
Sometimes words get misdirected, like when a person says ‘telephone’ while pointing to the television or saying the word ‘door’ when motioning towards the refrigerator. Often, as the Dementia journey progresses, difficulty with language and conversation increases as well.
There may come a time, when speaking in full or coherent sentences is impossible for someone living with Dementia. ‘Confabulation’ is the jumbling of words or phrases which sounds like ‘gibberish’ or ‘word salad’ to the cognitively in-tact person.
And just one more note I’d like to make on this topic is Joe’s walk or gait. We’ve all seen how stiff and strange he’s walking and how he’s wandering around stages, looking lost and confused. Here’s what experts say about that, in connection with dementia:
Different types of dementia can affect gait and posture, and as dementia progresses into the later stages, the majority of the person’s functioning declines. You may observe this as hesitant steps, difficulty with visuospatial tasks such as going up and down stairs, or challenges with balance.2 You may also see decreased physical movement due to apathy, or increased movement such as frequent wandering and restlessness.
So, bearing all that in mind, watch this very short clip. Notice Joe’s stiff face, and how he hardly blinks. Also, his eyes appear “lost” even though we know he’s struggling to read the teleprompter, but he can’t make the words he sees come out of his mouth the right way:
It’s sad to see this play out on the world stage, but it’s more infuriating than anything because the US government shouldn’t be a nursing home for an arrogant fool and his power-crazed wife.
This post originally appeared on WayneDupree.com.