Thank everyone for their comments on my husband's inability to communicate. I read each and every comment. Forgive me if I don't refer to anyone by name, it was like walking into a big room and being introduced to a lot of people at one time and I don't remember all the names. You gave me lots of information and many things to think about and look in to. I am going to try to answer as many questions without being too wordy as I can. My husband retired from his job in the fall of 01 a perfectly healthy man. By the spring of 02 he was slurring his speech badly. MRI and CT scans showed nothing. He went to speech therapy for several weeks and showed great improvement. Within a year he had gotten worse than before. More MRIs and CT scans, again nothing showing. Another round of speech therapy. No improvement this time. For the next few years his speech got worse but otherwise he was healthy. In the spring of 07 he started to fall quite often and eventually fell backward down the basement steps which resulted in a trip to the hospital. By fall of 07 he had been diagnosed with PSP. A disease somewhat like Parkinson's but worse which would cause his muscles to stiffen and eventually result in being wheel chair bound or bed bound. Dementia was not a symptom of this disease, but he continued to become more and more confused. In April of this year a trip to the neurologist resulted in admission to the hospital because he became "aggressive" during the exam. There was no convincing anyone that he was not "aggressive" he was frustrated by his inability to say what he wanted. In talking with the doctor during the hospital stay, I mentioned that I was worried about his confusion since it did not go with his diagnosis. It was then that they said he also had frontotemporal dementia. During the early time when only his speech was affected we did get a Lingraphica device and he did well with it for a while but it was a long process to get from one place to the other with the device. I also made him a book using clip art from the computer showing simple things like hot, cold, sick, tired, hungry etc. and again, it worked for a while. But now he can not read nor write and he has very little use of his hands. He can still recognize the things in pictures but he can't use his hands to open a book or flash the cards, and he can not look down (part of the PSP) so that anything that his is looking at has to be in front of his face, not lying on a table or anything. The doctors tell me that they do not believe that his inability to speak has anything to do with the PSP or the dementia that it is something else entirely (except they don't know what). This was a little longer than I meant it to be, thanks for listening.