Looking back, knowing what you know now about Dementia and your LO, if you could go back in time and eagle eye watch for the tiniest sign that cognitive function was beginning to decline, what incident or event would you pick up on as that tiniest sign?
For us, I think it would be her absolute inability to stop herself from bringing a painful subject (and her ridiculous opinions about it) into EVERY conversation. Not just some or most. Every conversation, no matter the topic. Despite being asked not to, despite it being demanded that she not, despite people getting to the point of refusing to speak to her at all because of it. Every conversation, without fail. That started probably 20 or so years ago.
I can think of some others as well, but this one is the most prominent.
It starts very slowly and spotty. By time we see more regular and unmistakeable behaviors, our LO is already in moderate dementia.
I moved in with my folks to be their caregiver, so I was able to spend the last two years of my mom's life with her.
Last year, when I mentioned some concern about having early signs of dementia, a physical therapist told me that forgetting where you put the scissors is not a sign of dementia. If you forget what scissors are for then it is worth discussing with a doctor.
This has been a very helpful barometer. ❤️
She’d always been obsessed with ways she’d been wronged, so again, it was tough to determine a specific time.
So, it's been over five years since the diagnosis. He's gradually slipping away. Really hard to watch.
Does your mom have tremors or Parkinsons-type symptoms? Just curious. My mom was diagnosed as having "some type of dementia", but it doesn't seem to be Alzheimer’s because her memory is pretty good 10 years into it. She refuses any more tests, and I don't blame her, so we aren't pushing it. But if I had to guess, being a big Google expert (haha), I'd say she has a mix of vascular and Lewy. Delusions and hallucinations galore, but no tremors or stiff limbs. It's a sad puzzle.
It was progressive, as we all know, but the element that made it impossible to deny was when she started putting her hearing aid batteries in her ear, rather than in the hearing aids.
Even though I had seen it all progress over years, and knew what was happening, other family members - with only occasional calls and visits rather than regular weekly visits and frequent calls - still could not see the signs until it became extreme.
At the point where I was taking her to the doctor to get hearing aid batteries taken out of her ear canal, shutting off the breaker to the stove, and disabling her car, I still had my sibling telling me nonsense like “Oh, she’s just bored and lonely.”
Yet, years earlier, my mother could not see the signs of dementia in my father. Spotting the signs seems to take regular contact, but not *constant* contact. She couldn’t see the signs in him because to her it was too gradual from her perspective. Others couldn’t see the signs in her because their contact was too limited and irregular to see the steady steps of decline.
I said that I thought I was seeing it in my husband in the early 2000s. There were quick moments of confusion about time and place. The doctor said he was having Transient Eschemic Attacks (TIAs), so that's how the strange episodes were explained. In 2002, we gifted our daughter and her husband the lot next door to us, they built a house and moved in early spring 2003. In 2004, I found him staring out the window at their house and he said to me, "Why is there a house on our lot? Who put it there? Who lives there?" I'm not sure that was a TIA. By 2013 I was sure he had something psychological going on. He was diagnosed with dementia (frontotemporal and mild cognitive impairment) in 2017.
My oldest daughter said she now thinks she saw things in the late 1990s (there is too much history to go into right now). In her eyes, she believes her father (a pastor who had an affair that ended in 1995 but it wasn't revealed until 2017) was given over to a "seared conscience" or "reprobate mind" and that the things he started saying/doing/teaching back then could have been the beginnings of dementia.
My other daughter said she looks back and realizes that he was always a little bit "off" but just attributed it to his personality as it was his "normal" way of behaving. In public, he had to be the funny guy and the star of the show and everyone's best friend, but at home he was sharp, criticial, controlling, and nasty. She recalled me saying to him once, "Why don't you pretend we are your church people and treat us the same way you treat them?"
So, is it possible that my husband was showtiming even in the 90s, or do we just attribute it to personality? I guess that is a question we'll never know the answer to for certain.