Do you have much experience with people with Alzheimer’s? It’s not a question of keeping the spelling simple. And anyway what is this scenario where any damn thing depends on their ability to spell their clinical condition?
Yes, I get that. The word dementia itself has 3 syllables, they can’t come up with a shorter and easier to remember and speak 2 syllable version?
They shortened polytetrafluoroethylene down to 2 syllables, so why not help those suffering brain disorders and memory issues?
You ever ask a person suffering Alzheimer’s how to actually spell their own condition? They’ll probably be either like ‘old timers’ or just a frustrated ‘fuck you’
scarabic@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
over_clox@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
No, not specifically Alzheimer’s anyways.
But for almost the past decade, I’ve been helping care for people that have had stroke, partly paralyzed, have brain damage, mute and unable to speak from birth, etc.
Thank you for asking though. I actually do have genuine care for disabled people. Even if I’m not a complete expert in the field, I do what I can. They don’t have many people actually willing to help.
Does it hurt to think about ways to help better? Like what if something happens, and I can no longer help?
DemBoSain@midwest.social 9 hours ago
They shortened the name of PTFE to Teflon because they wanted to sell it. Once there’s a market for frontotemporal dementia it will get a short name too.
over_clox@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
Frontotemporal Dementia…
FD
Problem solved. /s
Yeah I get the whole marketing strategy thing… ☹️
ByteJunk@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
Bro has dementia. You could call it the most memorable, epic name ever, and he’d still forget all about it in 10 minutes. It’s a fucked up disease.
But as to your gripe with the name, Frontotemporal dementia is a pretty decent name.
Even if you know nothing about medicine, you’ll understand it’s some type of dementia, and immediately get a very good image of how it affects a patient.
If you’re more familiar with medicine and the brain, it will also tell you what regions these specific types of dementia affect, giving you clues as to what brain functions could be most impaired.
Thank god medicine has moved away from eponyms, because Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or Binswanger disease, or Fahr disease, are much much worse. If you’re not familiar, you’d have no clue if they’re a type of dementia or a problem on your anus.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Sure, because what we need in medicine is more acronyms to occlude meaning.
over_clox@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
I’m pretty sure that if a patient came in slurring their words and all they could basically remember to say was ‘I can’t remember much, but my last doctor said I have FTD’, then if the acronym was standardized, every doctor would know what they mean.