My Wife, Janelle, has been in Stage 7 (final stage) for a year and a half. She is in very good physical health, so has been declining very slowly. I think she is getting closer to the end but no one can give me any predictions of when it will all end for her. Some recent declines have been:
Inability to stand alone,
Forgetting how to swallow liquids,
Much less interest in eating even pureed foods,
Talking less, even a few intelligible words - only mumbling.
Sleeping 20 hours a day.
Some sleep apnea at night.

Those are my observations of where she is now. Because her physical health is so good, I think the thing that will cause the end to come will be failure to intake food and liquids.
She has a do not recussitate (sp?) document, so I do not plan for her to have to use a feeding tube.

There is a very detailed listing of all of the stages of Alzheimer's on the website listed below:
http://www.alzinfo.org/clinical-stages-of-alzheimers

Hope you can find what you need on that website.

Bally

Thanks a lot

I just noticed that this site cut off the last letters of the web address that I listed. I'll try again:
www.alzinfo.org/clinical-stages-of-alzheimer's

I hope it works this time.

I would like to know if you find the site and if you find it helpful.
Bally

well, it didn't work again. I'll try again. www.alzinfo.org/clinical- stages-of- alzheimers

Bally

Also, post your question agin on the general topics and more people will see it.

Bally, I just went to that site. Amazing! It is the most informative sight I've ever seen and I've roaming the internet halls for years reading everything I can find. According to that sight my mother is moderate to severe and is just about to roll into stage 7. Probably in the next few months.

http://www.alzinfo.org/10/articles/expect-youre-caregiving This link will take you to a personalized evaluation and ongoing updates. I don't know how good it is but am going to give it a shot.

I would like to add that patients with Early Onset like my husband had can be a bit different. Early Onset is ALZ diagnosis before the age of 60, my husband was 50 when he was diagnosed.

Rollie could still walk and had more than 100 words. His walk was a slow shuffle and his speech was garbled. He had lost his appetite months before he died recently and he dropped pounds weekly, going from 162 lbs in June to 120 in November. He did not interact with people anymore, he seemed to be shuffling around in his own little world. He did sleep a lot also. He got a high fever 10 days before he passed that we did not treat with anti biotics and allowed nature to take its course.

Very often the inability to walk, swallow, talk coherently, are signs that the end is not far off. Very often they revert to a foetal position and seem to stiffen up. Weight loss before the end is also very common. Peace be with you as you face this difficult time in your life. You WILL feel relief, and this is normal, because their quality of life has been so poor. You have been grieving the person you lost in stages for some time now. xxxxxxxxxxxx

First let me state that every case is different and very hard to compare or say anything with any certainty.........BUT...having said that in my experience it was first weight loss ( even though he was still eating), then aphasia (difficulty with understand and finding the right words to speak), these both went on for the last 6-8 months of life in our case .....then came an infection out of the blue(viral so antibiotics didn't help), the infection ravaged his body and took his mobility..rehab was helping but then the infection came back with a vengence, he could no longer walk again...and the last attacck affected his swallowing which continued to worsen and then he went in to a coma for the last 5 days of his life. The doctor said he would have gone sooner but his heart was so strong. On the 6th day it gave out and he passed away.

Others whom I have discussed this with had very similar end of life experience. I believe that when it gets to the last stage the brain no longer signals all the body parts as it should and one by one they shut down.

That is just my theory .....but I really believe it to be true.(unless they have some other physical ailment which takes them first, ie; bad heart,cancer,etc)