Dementia dilemma
Too often, on the basis of age, doctors assume patients have dementia or other cognitive impairments.
“What a shock and a surprise when doctors actually talk to folks and do a neurocognitive screen and find they’re just fine,” Dr. Perls said.
The decline in hearing and vision can lead to a misdiagnosis of cognitive impairment because the patients are not able to hear what you’re asking them. “It’s really important that the person can hear you – whether you use an amplifying device or they have hearing aids, that’s critical,” he said. “You just have to be a good doctor.”
Often the physical toll of aging exacerbates social difficulties. Poor hearing, for example, can accelerate cognitive impairment and cause people to interact less often, and less meaningfully, with their environment. For some, wearing hearing aids seems demeaning – until they hear what they’ve been missing.
“I get them to wear their hearing aids and, lo and behold, they’re a whole new person because they’re now able to take in their environment and interact with others,” Dr. Perls said.
Dr. Flomenbaum said alcohol abuse and drug reactions can cause delirium, which, unlike dementia, is potentially reversible. Yet many physicians cannot reliably differentiate between dementia and delirium, he added.
The geriatric specialists talk about the lessons they’ve learned and the gratification they get from caring for centenarians.
“I have come to realize the importance of family, of having a close circle, whether that’s through friends or neighbors,” Dr. Goel said. “This work is very rewarding because, if it wasn’t for homebound organizations, how would these people get care or get access to care?”
For Dr. Baker, a joy of the job is hearing centenarians share their life stories.
“I love to hear their stories about how they’ve overcome adversity, living through the depression and living through different wars,” she said. “I love talking to veterans, and I think that oftentimes, we do not value our older adults in our society as we should. Sometimes they are dismissed because they move slowly or are hard to communicate with due to hearing deficits. But they are, I think, a very important part of our lives.”
‘They’ve already won’
Most centenarians readily offer the secrets to their longevity. Aline Jacobsohn, of Boca Raton, Fla., is no different.
Ms. Jacobsohn, who will be 101 in October, thinks a diet of small portions of fish, vegetables, and fruit, which she has followed since her husband Leo died in 1982, has helped keep her healthy. She eats lots of salmon and herring and is a fan of spinach sautéed with olive oil. “The only thing I don’t eat is meat,” the trim and active Ms. Jacobsohn said in a recent interview over Zoom.
Her other secret: “Doctors. I like to stay away from them as much as possible.”
Shari Rosenbaum, MD, Jacobsohn’s internist, doesn’t dismiss that approach. She uses a version of it when managing her three centenarian patients, the oldest of whom is 103.
“Let them smoke! Let them drink! They’re happy. It’s not causing harm. Let them eat cake! They’ve already won,” said Dr. Rosenbaum, who is affiliated with Boca Raton–based MDVIP, a national membership-based network of 1,100 primary care physicians serving 368,000 patients. Of those, nearly 460 are centenarians.
“You’re not preventing those problems in this population,” she said. “They’re here to enjoy every moment that they have, and they might as well.”
Dr. Rosenbaum sees a divergence in her patients – those who will reach very old age, and those who won’t – starting in their 60s.
“The centenarians don’t have medical problems,” she said. “They don’t get cancer. They don’t get diabetes. Some of them take good care of themselves. Some don’t take such good care of themselves. But they are all optimists. They all see the glass half full. They all participate in life. They all have excellent support systems. They have good genes, a positive attitude toward life, and a strong social network.”
Ms. Jacobsohn – whose surname at the time was Bakst – grew up in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, during the rise of the Nazi regime. The family fled to Columbia in 1938, where she met and eventually married her husband, Leo, who ran a business importing clocks and watches in Cali.
In 1989, the Jacobsohns and their three children moved to south Florida to escape the dangers of kidnappings and ransoms posed by the drug cartels.
Ms. Jacobsohn agreed that she appears to have longevity genes – “good stock,” she calls it. “My mother died 23 days before she was 100. My grandmother lived till 99, almost 100,” she said.
Two years ago, she donated her car to a charity and stopped driving in the interest of her own safety and that of other drivers and pedestrians.
Ms. Jacobsohn has a strong support system. Two of her children live nearby and visit her nearly every day. A live-in companion helps her with the activities of daily life, including preparing meals.
Ms. Jacobsohn plays bridge regularly, and well. “I’m sorry to say that I’m a very good bridge player,” she said, frankly. “How is it possible that I’ve played bridge so well and then I don’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday?”
She reads, mainly a diet of history but occasionally novels, too. “They have to be engaging,” she said.
The loss of loved ones is an inevitable part of very old age. Her husband of 47 years died of emphysema, and one of her sons died in his 70s of prostate cancer.
She knows well the fate that awaits us all and accepts it philosophically.
“It’s a very normal thing that people die. You don’t live forever. So, whenever it comes, it’s okay. Enough is enough. Dayenu,” she said, using the Hebrew word for, “It would have been enough” – a favorite in the Passover Seder celebrating the ancient Jews’ liberation from slavery in Egypt.
Ms. Jacobsohn sang the song and then took a reporter on a Zoom tour of her tidy home and her large flower garden featuring Cattleya orchids from Colombia.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.