I've had experience with a few people with Alzheimers and/or dementia, and it's always been that most of the time they are confused and bewildered but if you catch them at the right angle they're still in there and you can talk to them.

I have a close friend who is mentally deteriorating -- she forgets things. You tell her something, she forgets all about it and asks you again. It used to be that she'd remember for a while, now she'll forget something from this morning. But if you can deal with repeating things and not act upset, she's still her, she's still worth talking to. My aunt had a friend in the same situation only much worse (incontinent, incredibly confused), and even when he was awfully confused she kept on talking as if he was making sense and sometimes he would -- she put hours of time every day into this, and every few days they'd have an actual conversation. He was still in there. The problem for most people like this is that nobody is putting the time in. My cousin's mother-in-law didn't seem to have anything left -- but she was in a home, being visited once every few months.

One of my relatives has been experiencing confusion and general decline for the last couple of years. But even now, she gets much more focused when she is with people she knows, who are happy to hear her talk about the past.

The paranoia stuff mentioned above is much more frightening to me than the kind of deterioration I have seen close up.