A very comprehensive and sad article about a couple, the husband is suffering from FTD. You can also read it at nytimes.com/health. It's entitled " When Illness Makes a Spouse a Stranger". Glad they put it on the front page.
Great article. You can also see/read it on the MSNBC home page. There was a period the clinicians thought my DW had Picks disease...now they are not so sure what dimencia she may have, including ALZ. Still no reliable form(s) of clinical diagnosis... only the continued progress of the disease. One wonders if, like Cancer, there may not be a single cause/treatment/cure for all the various forms of dimentia.
Yes I really enjoyed that piece too! And I noted how they mentioned how they lose friends and family in the process, ugh, it is like another form of disease, this uncaring. I am sure, that those people, believe they are not doing anything wrong, that they will find any excuse.
What struck me in the article was the frequent job changes. That started very early on for us. Never dreamed it was a symptom of what was to come. You know-I'm finally starting to lose the guilt of not recognizing early symptoms and doing something about it. There is nothing to be done but hang on for the ride.
We didn't have frequent job change but L became more and more unhappy with her job over time and I think it was related. Once she had the bicycle accident she could do her job anymore. She was highly regarded at work beforehand but I noticed more problems with working with a computer and doing complex formatting.
That article is very good. I've had friends and family tell me that they read it, I didn't have to send it out.
Some of you may know that I've been writing about AD for many years. DH died 10 yrs ago after my hands-on caregiving for him for a decade. For the past 5 yrs I've been writing 'All About Alzheimer's' for Today's Senior magazine (www.todayssr.com). Over and over I've known of people who get a dx of dementia, or whatever, and say, Thank God it's not AD. I long ago learned that other dementias are not any easier than AD. My 90 y.o. sister has had vascular dementia (VaD) for years, and I've written about her in my column as well as a close relative who died from Parkinson's and I've also known a man who had Pick's. In June, the 1st of three columns briefly describing dementias other than AD will be published. It is about VaD which I know well because of my sister, in July it will be about FTD and in August it will end with Lewy Body disease & mixed dementia. I would like to write more extensively about non-AD conditions but am restricted to only one page so my info is just a taste of what is not AD. I just hope to make the general public realize that it's not always and only AD, and how impossible it is to dx, so many symptoms overlap and how impossible it is for the caregivers & family. So this MSNBC article is important and am so glad it's published and on this site. There's just a world of things the public doesn't know about dementias and, at this point, neither do the experts--but they're researching, learning. The Natl Inst on Aging has an excellent FREE booklet: Alzheimer's Disease: Unraveling the Mystery. Go to www.nia.nih.gov/Alzheimer's or call 1-800-438-4390. As of now, they do not have such informative publications on other brain diseases, only very little, which tells you how little is known about them, but I suspect they will soon.
DW was fired from 5-6 jobs in 2 years. . . . Some after only a few weeks. It caused a lot of marital issues as you all would know. "Why cant you keep a job, you idiot?"
I suspect it is a symptom that is not well promoted/discussed because most dementias are a post-retirement condition where this would not be recognized. However it is a HUGE symptom in us younger onset groups!
Hey, how about it Alz Assoc? - "Know the 11 signs" . . . . .
Different dementias? I see it like discussing different cancers - each one has its good & bad points relative to treatment and symptoms but who wants to get cancer at all?
I don't know what the article and the photos look like in print. On my tablet, it was four pages. I can't remember another four pages that I have ever read that while reading I had to stop after every few paragraphs and get up, look out the window, pet a cat, whatever. I felt my chest constricting. Now, I only remember that this was the story of a couple. The rest of it has been put in that consciously safer place called denial.
H has been dx ftd, eoad, cerebral atrophy, back to ftd, now organic dementia with vascular implications.
The earliest of these, initially mci but now "reclassified" to ftd, was 2006. He was in his 40's.
The first thing I questioned was a job change in 1999. It was not for the better. I questioned it, mostly in my mind, but pushed the doubt away. Surely it was his decision and I was a dabbler, so what could I say?
2004 was the first hospitalization for behavior. He remained functional for the next several years. But, he would buy cars. One at a time, pretty much year after year:
Phone call: H, "I called to make sure you are home to open the garage door".
Me, "I'm sure the remote (not one you hold, the kind programmed on the rear window) should be okay".
H, "I was driving by the dealer and saw a car I liked so I went in and bought it and am driving it now".
Again, what could I say? It was money he was earning and twice he even bought me a new car. He was not handing over cash, but trading one for another, signing finance agreements, and paying full list price. Maybe eight cars in total, spread out over three dealerships. Well, I rationalized, people do this. Father would never drive a car for more than three years, but sure as heck would never pay list price, for him most of the fun was the deal. H works hard, let him have his cars...
Also over the years- charges on credit cards for mostly finance information, you know the advice and newsletters that all seem to retail for $199 or so per year. This despite a long term account with an advisor at a brokerage firm.
Yes, a stranger indeed. I think one of the reasons H has been confused, exasperated and impatient with me (at snf rehab) is that he is thinking "who is the person and why does she keep talking about things that make no sense to me"?
DH has a FTD dx in 2008 with a possible dx of mixed dementia (FTD & ALZ). Like m-man's experience, DH had difficulty staying employed-either quit, was fired from several jobs over 8 years. And yes, it caused significant marital discord because I could not understand why such a smart guy who worked for 1 company for almost 20 years could not/would not hold a job. I had no idea that this could be a symptom of a disease, much less dementia. Combine the joblessness with his declining ability to manage the bills and finances (since he wasn't working he needed to contribute something to our lives) it created so much havoc in or marriage that I sought counseling and prepared to divorce him. What a heartbreaking and difficult time the days before diagnosis were; once he was dx'd I had an explanation for the years of confusing behavior but now had to face an even more difficult future.
I read the article-it was excellent and it chronicles our lives before DH was dx'd. Except Rich had violent behaviors. Still not a marshmellow.