I am new here today. Just found this site and thank you Joan. I have been looking for people in this same position and am so grateful for all of you. I cried when I started reading, just to find you guys, then cried when I realized what I might be up against in years to come. Will I be able to do this? All of you are so strong. My dh was been dx with dementia in Aug. 2007. So far we are doing okay. He is functional with forgetfulness. Still drives, showers, does chores and is okay. We spend a lot of time looking for misplaced items and repeating some things. I will go into more later. We live in Indy. One question I haven't seen addressed here, but maybe I haven't read far enough is this. He doesn't want anyone to know his dx, but people are noticing his behavior. What do you do in a case like that? Thank you all for sharing everything you have learned on this journey. I so appreciate it.
Most AD patients -- MOST -- do not develop the nastier symptoms you're reading about here, so do not panic. As we say, plan for the worst but hope for the best.
My husband didn't want anyone to know for a long time. When it became clear our staff were noticing that he would sometimes say strange things, we talked, and he agreed I could tell them, but did not want to be there when I did.
If your husband is still resisting, you might consider telling people when he isn't around. It will make life easier for both of you, especially if neighbors know and can keep an eye out for him. Also, they sell (or you can make) "business cards" that say something like "please be patient ... the person I'm with has Alzheimer's". You can discretely hand these to people, e.g., to the waiter when you go to a restaurant.
Welcome One day at a time. My DH is about where your's is but has stopped driving now. He is very functional otherwise except when we travel or when he was in the hospital. Those times were confusing to him. He was diagnosed a little over a year ago but had some symptoms for a couple of years before that. Sunshyne's reassurance that not all AD people go through the really nastier symptoms was very comforting to me when I first came here. Like your name says, we are just taking one day at a time and hoping his progression will be very slow.
As for letting people know, we didn't at first but it does become more evident and people know whether you tell them or not. We're pretty open with it now. He will tell people he has dementia even when I don't think it's necessary.
One Day, welcome. My wife agreed to telling people early in her disease (she is now stage 6) and I have used the cards Sunshyne mentioned. I made them on my computer using Avery Injet Business Card stock. If, when you tell someone that he has AD, and they reply "Oh, we all forget at times", set them straight. My response is "I wish it were that simple".
Sunshyne, she said she was from "Indy". I assume this means Indiannapolis .
Welcome oneday! love that name and its soooo very appropriate for this forum!:) i agree to discreetly let persons associated with Dh his dx when hes not around. they will know how to handle it better knowing he has been diagnosed and react accordingly. true, many never go thru some of the nastiness here, ie-bad temper, rages, and poop patrol that some of us have gone thru which makes each case very individual. hope to see you posting often. divvi
Hi & Welcome One Day, I am so sorry you have a need to join this family, however, I am sure you will find everyone kind, helpful & non-judgemental. My husband is 58 with Frontal Temporal Dementia (FTD) He has been treating for memory problems for about 6 years, however, was just diagnosed in July 2008. Again Welcome, Kadee P.S. Look to the north & you will see me waving from Kokomo.
One Day, we were blessed in a way to have had a major medical issue to blame before the DX.. Although we knew something was wrong and had been going to drs. etc.for about 3 years.. it was AFTER a quadruple bypass with respiratory distress complication that we sort of piggy backed on the recovery from that to explain the early short term memory problems. Almost rightly so, DH believes they 'did something to him in the hospital..so therefore he doesn't agree with that he has alz. What they did FOR him, saved his life in the hospital and he recovered completely to the pre-hosp. stage.. It IS unfortunately AD. So we just told that DH had problems with short term memory.. and that was IT.. until someone asked.. is this progressive?? My answer was and is yes. Many in our community probably notice that it isn't improving.
Thank you all for your warm welcome. Yes I am in Indianapolis. We always refer to it as Indy! Waving back to Kadee. I am wondering about navagating this board. If I want to post on another discussion, do I click through to the last page like I did here and add comments? How does anyone know when a new message is posted? Do you have to scroll through every discussion to find a new message. Is there a faster way to get to the end of the pages that I don't know about? Any help will be appreciated. DH plays golf with several other men. They know he is acting strange. The other day he drove the golf cart in the wrong direction and hit his ball to the wrong green. This is a course he has been playing for at least 25 years. He will make the tee times, then call the guys and tell them when it is. Several days later he will call them again to make sure he told them the time. He doesn't want them to know, but of course they do. I don't see them. They are friends he has made at the golf course. I guess they will guess. I have had dh move his neuro appointment up to 4/9 because he has started walking into the wall and door frames. Not all the time, but he is becoming unsteady on his feet. I don't think he can judge distance very well and isn't aware of where he is in relation to where other things are. There is a vision issue as well. I will post that on the vision discussion if that is okay. Is is okay to post on a discussion that hasn't had any comments for awhile, or should I just add it here? That's where I'm a little lost.
One day-we don't bite. Just wander around the site to get comfortable. Take it one day at a time. If you scroll to the bottom of the thread you are reading you will find two choices: add your comments or in lighter print back to discussions-just click on your choice. On the blue strip on the top of the page-rt. corner you will find abc with a check under it-that is spell check for morons like me
The spell check is in your browser, bluedaze, not the site, so she may not have it. Oneday, start any discussion, no problem. If it's way off course, like how much you love your gerbils, just title it OT: gerbils or whatever. Otherwise, no problem. If you search (up there at the top) for content, not topics, you'll see that almost any topic you might be interested in is there. Find it, read it, and add to it if you wish; that will bring it "to the top."
You'll notice that threads you've read and to which there are no recent responses are not in bold, whereas ones where there are new responses are bolded. If you open one of those up (or the others) you'll go to the end of the thread automatically. Sometimes you have to click on the page number at the bottom if it's a long thread. Be sure when you add a comment that you click on "Add your comments" and WAIT until you see the comment there before you click "Back to Discussion"
One Day, did anyone mention you need to be logged in for the latest posts to appear in bold type. If you are not logged in you have to scroll to the bottom of the discussion. Sometime you will be kicked off log off and have to relog again.
And IF you are logged in and click on a thread you've read before (while logged in), it will open the thread on the most recent post that you read. :-) Very user-friendly.
Is nobody from over populated New Jersey? I do not understand where there is and where there is not "bold type"....It seems all posts are the same. Me not too smart!
<<I do not understand where there is and where there is not "bold type"....It seems all posts are the same.>>
marciaS, different browsers may treat things differently. I use Windows Internet Explorer Version 7.0, and if I'm logged in all message threads that I haven't read are highlighted in pale yellow. If I'm not logged in, ALL messages are highlighted in yellow. My "strategy" for trying to keep up with things is to visit the site several times each day, and each time I visit I try to open every highlighted thread on the first page or two (the most recent pages) and read the posts that have been added since the last time I visited. When I first joined this forum several months ago all threads appeared highlighted, of course, since I hadn't read any of them, but over a matter of a few days I managed to open and read all the highlighted posts on perhaps the most recent ten pages, and now I work at keeping all yellow off the first page or two.
I use Firefox and it is the same - yellow under unread. I also have a red number at the end of the thread saying how many new post since my last visit.
If you have an old yellow highlighted subject, you can click on it and then exit..and it goes to white. I did that on all the old subjects as they were too many to read. Just keeping up with current subjects is enough for me.
Janet, I hope Pamsc doesn't mind if I mention she should be on the list under South Carolina. I recently noticed her comment that she teaches at Clemson U. That makes three for the Palmetto state.
This may be a reeeeely silly question, but I still want to ask. Are Maine lobsters much less expensive there and do you all eat them frequently?... When I think of Maine, I always think of the scrumptious lobster... I wondered if you had "lobster stands" along the side of the roads the way we have Texas Gulf Shrimp readily available in our area.
There are lobster shacks all along the coast. They don't mostly serve as they do in the rest of the world, in a fancy restaurant: you sit at a picnic table, get a lobster, a cup of butter, and a nut cracker and pick. And lots of napkins, paper towels, bibs. You dismember the lobster, crack the claws, and eat. Kinda like (texas again) they used to have at the San Jacinto Inn - does that still exist - only with crabs and shrimps there. The very best deal on a lobster is Red's Eats (redzeets) on rt. 1 in Wiscasset. Meat from a whole lobster, on a bun. You don't have to do the picking out.
Where I go in July, Monhegan, there's a special set-up, the only closed season on the coast. Within a mile of that island (which is 10 miles out to sea), only the lobstermen from there can fish (i.e., drop lobster pots/traps overboard), and they can only fish for 180 consecutive days. They used to start on Jan. 1, and fish until the end of May, but lately they've been experimenting (under the guidance of the fisheries board) with starting earlier, and started in October this season. Only 13 boats can go out, and I think their limit is 200 traps/boat. (500?) Most lobstermen, particularly the ones from M'gan, are careful to mark egg-laying females with a notch and pitch them back so they can go on laying. The best lobsters are NOT in the summer, when they've shed their shells (not like soft-shelled crabs), but later, after the shells have gotten real hard. Mainers try really hard not to deplete that resource.
It's funny about lobster prices. We used to go to a restaurant in Cincinnati that flew lobsters in great quantities in daily. Cheaper than in Mass. Husband and buddies used to go after bugs (lobsters) off the Mass coast. Once I put one on our kitchen floor and our poor Bassett went crazy.
The best lobster I ever had was at a local restaurant in March. It was really sweet. During the summer we get our lobster from a "shack" just down the road from us, and for a little extra he will cook them for us. One day we had sailed into Stonington, one of the major lobstering towns on the coast, and found we could not buy 6 lobsters. All they did was sell wholesale. When I was a kid we cooked our lobsters in a big washtub over a fire on the beach and sat on the rocks to eat them. We can't do that anymore since the state does not want us to build a fire below high tide and get the ashes in the water. There isn't enough room above high tide for a fire that won't set our field on fire. These lobster meals always included my wife's cole slaw, and blueberry buckle, made from fresh blueberries from our fields. Last fall the price of lobsters fell so low that some lobstermen didn't want to go out. There was a truck near us selling them for $3.50 per pound. We haven't seen that price in years. The one time I decided to buy from him for dinner, he wasn't there :-(
I just wonder how much lobster I could eat before I died of lobster consumption? I'd like that place where we'd eat at the picnic table.. because it's hard to eat lobster "like a lady" in a fancy-smancy place. Remember crawfish boils in Texas/La. That's so much fun and one can really get down and dirty (or messy.) whatever!
Cardiologist had the gall to tell me to avoid shellfish! Like, whaaaaat?....... Nope, just marched out of there and went about my way. Back to the fry or not fry question earlier. Common sense should prevail, right.
Nancy B, talking about "getting down and dirty eating", did you ever go to the old Kreutz's Market in Lockhart for the world's best barbecue when visiting your kids in Austin/San Marcos? Kreutz has moved into new digs now and I think the old place with the tall chimney is now called Smitty's. They serve your barbecue on pink butcher paper and you take it to a table and most folks eat it with their fingers. I took a fancy lawyer first cousin of mine from Austin there once, and when we got to the table and started going at it with our fingers he just sat there -- saying, "I refuse to eat like a savage!" That was always a "must stop" on our way out west in our RV. Going out I-10, we'd usually detour all the way up to Livingston/Navasota/Brenham to avoid the Houston traffic.
Honey child, I grew up in Lockhart. The Schmidt family lived next door to us. Edgar started Kreuz (pronounced Krites) and his son Rick has it now. Certainly it's the same great brisket and sausage, but not as much fun as the old place where the community butcher knives were chained to the table, and all we got with the barbeque was a few slices of white bread and onions. NEVER ask for sauce, remember. They only used dry rub.
I ate in the new location about a year ago..out on the Austin highway. When we were in S.C., I'd order it and they'd ship it overnight. yum!
Do you remember the men's bathroom behind the old location???
The Schmidt kids had a falling out and daughter who owned the building (son Rick owned the business) didn't renew her brother's lease as he wanted it ...ooops, That's why the old place is now called Smitty's. Her dad, Edgar's - nickname.
Nancy, I never had the pleasure(?) of using the men's bathroom -- we always had our RV parked out back. But I well remember the walk in through the back door and past the fire pit to get to the butcher block where you'd ask for a few pounds of shoulder clod and they'd cut an weigh it and you'd pay for however much it weighed. We always bought lots of extra beef and sausage rings and had them wrap it so we could freeze it and continue to enjoy it during our trip. And for my DW's birthday a year ago, I had them ship forty or so pounds of brisket and sixty or so sausage rings to feed a crowd of about 60 bluegrass picker friends.
Lockhart is on my list of places to enjoy again once this Alzheimer journey is over.
The restroom, if you called it that, was a boarded square, up off the ground... The men would walk in - turn, walk a little more and then turn..and they'd be in the middle of the maze. Then, they'd just stand and pee on the ground. From a distance, you could see their legs inside. Gross. As children, we'd squeel and fuss if Daddy would park our car back there. Of course, today, they wouldn't allow that, ... but back in the 40's and 50's, no one thought about it...It was a community outhouse...for ONLY number ONE.
I can still see the greasy pink butcher paper Kruez's used.. with the rings of sausage wrapped up inside. and I loved the brisket. So tender...and smokey. I forgot to mention...if you wanted a salad, they'd sell you a whole tomato. You had to slice it yourself.
<<The restroom, if you called it that, was a boarded square, up off the ground>>
We fashioned something very similar out of a few sheets of old corrugated tin for a reunion we had here at our home for a couple of hundred people back in 1996 -- lots of beer and we were concerned about that many people overloading our septic tank, so the men would go behind the tin and pee through a barbwire fence onto a neighbor's overgrown property -- we referred to it as "the pissery".
I guess our many visits to Kreuz's would have been during the 80s and 90s, but the ambience was still there -- legislators from Austin sitting side by side with hispanic laborers at the long tables, paint peeling from the smoke stained walls, cartons beside the doorway where you were expected to return your empty beer or soft drink bottles, the same folks waiting on you year after year. That's all missing from the new place -- maybe we'll have to try Smitty's next time.
The Elephant's grave yard, home of the Sebring shuffle, 12 hours of sebring races, I am in Sebring Fl My wife has eoad at 55 yrs old, and I am the caregiver (if you can call it that). Contact info frankslawn@hotmail.com