Alzheimer's Disease is the most common cause of dementia that triggers memory loss.
The disease is heart-breaking to see progress, obscuring memories and thinking skills for those afflicted.
"The disease is progressive and that means it always gets worse," Janice Wade-Whitehead said, the CEO at Alzheimer's Tennessee in Knoxville, said.
As the disease gets worse, pressure is placed on the family to make important decisions for the individual to keep them safe. These decisions are often tough ones, forcing families to keep their loved ones from doing even the most basic tasks they once took pleasure in.
"My dad's grocery store was one mile from the house and he got lost," Carla Rafferty said.
Carla Rafferty and her family went through this with her dad, but one of the toughest things they had to do was take away something that defined who her father was.
"My dad carried a gun on him all the time. It was who he was. Taking that away was like taking away part of his identity," Carla Rafferty said.
For Carla's family, taking away her dad's gun was a process. She said the family didn't want him to know what was going, so the first thing they did was take the bullets out of his gun, then they put a lock on it.
"It gradually moved to where we kept it at the side table by the bed," Raffery said.
Eventually, her dad forgot how important that gun was to him.
Experts said before the progressive disease gets too bad it's important to have conversations about guns early on.
"If you have hand guns or someone in the family you'd like to pass them on to. We would tell them we need to start thinking about getting the guns out of the house," Wade-Whitehead said.
She said during these conversations -- speak slowly and clearly, be patient and talk to the person one on one free of distractions.
"It would be heart breaking to have a loss of life because we didn't intervene," Wade-Whitehead said.
If you aren't ready to remove the guns from the house, Alzheimer's Tennessee recommends putting them in a safe place like a gun safe or a secure location.