My dh has been a control freak all of our lives together. A source of constant friction. With the advancement of this destructive disease, I have seen one positive element - my control-freak husband has become (for the most part) a gentle lamb who looks to me to take care of things. He is sweet, non-demanding (except when I've been on the telephone too long) and uncontrolling. I never thought I'd live to see this day. Sadly, it is accompanied by this destructive disease and other undesireable elements that make me so sad.
I see what you mean, mothert. I guess folks here have seen it go both ways--gentle spouses become difficult, and challenging spouses become mild. I am, at least in the context of AD-world, fortunate to have an easy-going husband who has remained easy-going.
My mother is in the early stages of Alzheimers and no longer has the cognitive capacity to be judgemental. Big improvement. My husband was always disorganized and forgetful and so far his Lewy Body Dementia is just more of the same.
Interesting point Pam, and one of the reasons there's such a blurry line when I try to think back to just when Jeff started slipping. He was always a little ADD in the sense of jumping from one project to the next, leaving things undone for random stretches, and tending to create clutter in his workspace. So for a while there I considered some of the worsening "normal," or at least just slight exaggeration to the usual, and didn't attribute anything more sinister to it.
I have read on this site and others about lthe different personality changes that our AD spouses go through as this disease progresses. Before Celexa, my dh was getting fairly aggressive; but that drug has helped a lot. He still has his moments and I often think we are in the honeymoon stage of this disease; but I hope his sweet demeanor will be at least one olive branch in a long, dark journey.
Hope you all are having a calm and peaceful New Year's Day and that 2012 will be a better year than the last one.