Please go to the home page - www.thealzheimerspouse.com - and read the notice about a new survey. A Duke University researcher is requesting your help in filling out a caregiver survey to aid in her research about how dementia changes relationships. I filled it out - it took less than 20 minutes.
What an amazing survey!!! Lorrie, I agree with you that the symptoms become a new normal because when I read some of them I had to think about them as symptoms instead of life. I did like the many questions about us as the caregiver and not just questions about the patient.
I just read about this survey and plan to go to it. My question was going to be wondering if I was qualified since my husband has already died, so it was good to read JudithKB's post above.
It seemed sort of odd filling out the survey "after the fact" with my DW dead for three plus years now, but i did the best I could at answering the questions for how she was in the months before hospice had to be brought in.
This is kind of off-topic for this thread, but it is about a survey. Last night I was going through some draws in my dh's computer desk and I found a survey he had done in 2007 regarding AD. It was multi-choice and the object of the survey was to determine if the person was mild, moderate, severe or very severe. I was really floored with his answers...they really seemed to be basically truthful and how I would have answered them for him....he scored a "moderate" in 2007and that was when he had his first MRI and dx. It now seems unreal that he had his AD for 5 years...that time now seems to have gone so fast.
I completed the survey. I agree with MaryinPA that some of it was difficult for me to answer....the character traits section - it seemed that so many didn't apply to hubs! I did the best I knew how, but......