I moved your question to its own topic. Welcome to my website. You have come to a place of comfort for spouses/partners who are trying to cope with the Alzheimer's/dementia of their husband/wife/partner. The issues we face in dealing with a spouse/partner with this disease are so different from the issues faced by children and grandchildren caregivers. We discuss all of those issues here - loss of intimacy; social contact; conversation; anger; resentment; stress; and pain of living with the stranger that Alzheimer's Disease has put in place of our beloved spouse/partner.
The message boards are only part of this website. Please be sure to log onto the home page - www.thealzheimerspouse.com - and read all of the resources on the left side. I recommend starting with "Newly Diagnosed/New Member" and "Understanding the Dementia Experience". There are 4 sections for EOAD members - two of which focus on the young teens whose parents have EOAD (now called YOUNG onset AD- diagnosed before age 65). There is a great section on informative videos, and another excellent resource - Early Onset Dementia - A Practical Guide. You can go to the top of this page, click on "search", and type in EOAD, making sure the "topic" circle is filled in. All of the EOAD discussions will come up - there are about a dozen of them.
Do not miss the "previous blog" section. It is there you will find a huge array of topics with which you can relate. There is a "search" feature on the home page that allows you to look up different topics that may have been explored in a previous blog. Log onto the home page daily for new blogs; news updates; important information.
We discuss loneliness all of the time here. Copy and paste this link - it is the "lonely" dicussions on this board. http://thealzheimerspouse.com/vanillaforum/search.php?PostBackAction=Search&Keywords=lonely&Type=Topics&btnSubmit=Search.
On the home page - www.thealzheimerspouse.com-, on the left side, write "lonely" in the search engine under the previous blog section. All of my blogs on loneliness will come up.
As Shirley said, this is by definition almost, a lonely line of work. Many of our discussions (such as a recent one on beginning to form connections for our eventual single life now,) hinge on the basic truth that we are lonely and we need to work on ways to mitigate that.
welcome GrannyB. when you feel like it maybe share a bit of info on you and spouse. we are a group of understanding spouses who are in the same boat with you dealing with fustration, lonliness, and conflicts over Alzheimers spouses. divvi
I haven't posted on here since I moved to be closer to my husband (in VA facility) 2 years ago. But I did want to comment on the loneliness, which sometimes is so overwhelming. I have 4 cats and a dog, and a great part time tutoring job working with dyslexic students. I am almost 63 and don't want to do "senior" stuff, esp. BINGO!!! (no offense to bingo players...) Up until the time I moved I had a horse and rode frequently and have been taking yoga classes for the last year. I find most of the 'Meet up" groups have women or men in their 30's or 40's. I find it very hard to make friends and have suffered from "social anxiety" which seems odd since I'm a teacher. I would love to just be able to call someone and say "Let's go to the movies, have a coffee, go shopping, etc. I would even be fine with a gay man to go places with. I think this kind of loneliness is specific to dementia spouses - hovering between feeling married and not married, kind of a limbo land. I would be interested to hear how other women or men have found friends of their age with common interests. I did try two "senior" centers, but everyone was much older. Thanks for listening!
Maybe someone needs to start 'baby boomer centers'. I keep reading articles about how different the baby boomers are retiring - none of this sitting around playing bingo.
Moving to a new place and making friends is hard. Making new friends is always hard but I will tell you that I met my best friend in the world at the gym and don't let age be a barrier because she is 25 years older than I am! I am a dragging-my-feet kinda work-out person and there she was chipper and friendly at 7:30 am. It took a while for me to warm up to her because I am not a morning person but we had coffee and now ten years later she is my dearest friend. She is 83 years old and lost her husband five years ago...in many ways her life is more like mine than my girlfriends my own age. My age group's husbands are still working, skiing, golfing, fishing gardening etc. I am sure you get the picture.
Thanks for your comments. I DID just join a book club, (through meetup.com) and judging from the pictures of members, the age range is wide, which is great. Unfortunately I can't go until next month, but that will give me time to read the book selection. Charlotte - love your "baby boomer centers" idea!! Maybe we are not water skiing, bungee jumping, etc., but most of us are NOT sitting around! Bluedaze - wow, I remember reading your comments two or 3 years ago. Glad you have stuck around! And I have 4 cats ranging from 22 years to 4 years. My 22 y.o. had kidney issues, and has to have fluids 2x wk. I have vet office experience and give her the fluids myself, which takes only about 3 minutes for 100 ml. Grendelsma - yes, you are right ab out the age not mattering. My HB will be 86 at the end of this month, and we have been married 37 yrs. Quite a few people felt it would never last - Ha! But neither of us ever imagined it would end up this way. I do have one good friend who is only 45 (14 yr. younger than me) and needs a wheelchair due to lupus. She also has had a brain tumor removed. She has been great for me when I'm so depressed but I do hesitate to "dump" on her due to her own problems. I did attend an Alz. support group - only 3 people and a facilitator who talked almost nonstop. In my former city, I was a member of the Alz. group there, with about 20 - 25 at each mtg, and they became real family to me. A social worker ran a group in a separate room at the same time for those who had been diagnosed, so my husband could go to "the donut place" while I was at the support group. That was wonderful, and was of course before I had to place him. There just doesn't seem to be any kind of group like that around here that I can find. Oooh, I have gone on and on - nice to be able to talk, even long distance!
Don't you hate it when the mod either talks non stop OR lets one of the other members of the group who never misses a mtg go on for 20 minutes of the 90 minutes for the meeting...others never have a chance to address a problem or share a successful tip.
bluedaze - I'm pretty sure I used coffeecat. Imagine my surprise when I moved and found an independent coffee place called "Coffeecat"! Were your "red boys" dachshunds or orange tabby cats? I also have a Chocolate Lab named Hershey who is really and truly my best friend and my cheerer-upper. Who is Gracie?
Mimi- yes it does drive me nuts when the moderator does that! It's rude and not fair to the others. My former group had each person go around for a BRIEF update, and then if some needed more time, we went around again. I tried going back to the group where I moved 4 times, and finally gave up.
Does anyone know what happened to "stuntgirl" ? I know she had an older husband like me, and also had a horse like I did.
coffeecat-my two red boys were a Maine Coon and a turkish van. Gracie is a blue eyed medium furred Siamese mix that turned out wonderful. She is very sweet and cuddly. Loves anyone who comes to the house.
Stuntgal is doing fine..she is not on FB much because she was advised with her work and school it would be better to remain off that social network. She is doing well and pops up now and then. She had such a rough run of it with her the way her husband and family treated her that she has moved on to be more with her own family and friends as she gets her footing again. And as my good friend here said, " I'll go to a few more ALZ meetings..feel I owe them a little support but then I want to get away from this miserable disease". Some just have to get away from it especially if it was as frought with as much stress, legal threats etc as her case was.
I had two red cats too..one was an apricot colored long hair kitty called Taco and his mate was a cameo taby ( red really red) called Nacho. I wanted a third and was going to call it Salsa!