Hi all..I've been reading the thread and thought I'd update you on my mother as well.  She was diagnosed with WKS in January of 2003.  I found her on New Year's day in an alcholic stupor.  Her drinking had progressed rapidly from when my dad died in 1998.  She was admitted to the hospital for dehydration and pneuomonia.  She was also extremely malnourished.  As Kelly said, alcohol inhibits the body's ability to process thiamine and that is coupled with the fact that an alcoholic also tends to substitute alcohol for food.  My mother was barely eating and looked like an Aushwitz victim.  She hid this from us with clothing and got away with it because we were in a different state but in the hospital it was horrifying.  She was confabulating all sorts of situations and was completely unaware of her surroundings.  During her hospitalization, she lost the ability to walk and almost died due to the complications of pneumonia on her existing COPD.  But she did recover and was released to a locked Alziemers unit in a nursing home.  At this point she was not walking but kept getting out of bed and thus was a danger to herself and we were unsure if she did regain mobility what she would do.  After 2 weeks there and with physical and occupational therapy she regained her ability to walk, though with a walker, and it was clear that she was much higher functioning than the other patients.  Alziemers victims decline and WKS victims if they are receiving the high doses of thiamine and are NOT continuing to imbibe alcohol can arrest the progression of the disease. 

 

Eventually she was released and I moved her to my state...to an assisted living facility.  When she first moved in she had a high level of assistance...she did not take care of herself, she was lethargic and apathetic, unaware really of her surroundings, she needed reminders to eat, bathe and generally take care of all of the activities of daily living.  We had her tested neuropsychologically and the findings were consistant with WKS...her intellectual functioning was fine..long term memory not bad but she had amnesia with regard to the last 10 yrs or so and about a 3 minute short term memory loss.  Her neurologist prescribed Alziemers meds... Exelon and Namenda.  That seemed to clear some of the cobwebs.  Brightened her up a bit though did not help with the memory loss nor would it.  At the advent of playing bridge...something neurologically clicked and all of a sudden she had an interest in what was going on around her, she started taking copious notes and writing herself reminders.  She functions fairly well now and is even mobile without assistance.

 

Now, she is doing rather well.  She has issues with hoarding now...mostly food, books, magazines.  Some of it is more due to the fact that she forgets she has someting.  But she can't throw anything away.  She's compulsive.  Her quality of life is much better than it was though it saddens me that it is not what it could have been had alcoholism not been a part of it all.  She really has no insight into her life or abilities.  Basically its like parenting a teenager.  All impulse no thought.  But she seems to be happy  and I suppose that's what counts.  I hope this helps anyone....I know this group was a bit more active and immensely helpful to me back in 2003 when all this started.

 

blessings, Kathy