Why this blog?

This blog is for caregivers of a loved one with Alzheimer’s. It offers a view of what it is like to travel this journey alone with your spouse or another loved one. I hope it helps to see and understand what lies ahead and how to prepare for it, if only in knowing what’s to come.

I’m offering my draft memoir in stages hoping to reach those who feel a need for an accounting of what to expect. This memoir, in draft form, acts as a roadmap through my journey with Judy, an explication through exposition; guidance is imputed for the reader.

The structure of the memoir is as follows:

Forward – Theme and Reason for Memoir (two pages)

Prologue – Introduce Emotion Bond (six pages)

Stage I –  Pre-Diagnosis –One Chapter

Stage II – Basic Forgetfulness –One Chapter

Stage III – Noticeable Memory Difficulties –Nine Chapters

Stage IV – More Than Memory Loss – Eight Chapters

Stage V – Increased Dependence – Five Chapters

Stage VI – Severe Symptoms –Eight Chapters

Stage VII – Lack of Physical Control – Eleven Chapters

Epilogue – Restate Theme and purpose (two pages)

 Forward:

Yes, my Judy is gone, and I grieve her loss with deep sadness. Poignant images of her last days linger as memories of our fifty-eight years together overshadow her passing. Watching one so vibrant and self-reliant struggle through what were once routine daily activities pulled at my heartstrings, but we made it through those harsh times together. After her diagnosis, my goal became to make her journey as peaceful and painless as possible which prevailed until the end, but an end that was her death, nonetheless.

At the beginning of this journey, my knowledge of Alzheimer’s was minimal, so I turned to the Association WEB page looking for stories of real-life episodic scenarios and events told by former caregivers to enable me to better prepare for what was to come. I found information about the disease, its seven stages, resources available to assist caring for a loved one, and  how to notify experts to find a wanderer, but not what I was looking for.

From Amazon, I selected seven memoirs written by spousal caregivers, each with a unique personal story, but again, not what I sought. Six of these caregivers placed their loved one in an institution for the final two years thus ruling out providing any useful information about behavior in the critical disease’s final stage. Thus, Judy and I traveled our journey without any meaningful input from those who had gone before us.

After Judy’s passing, I decided to write the memoir I couldn’t find during our journey. In this memoir, I present episodic scenarios and events Judy and I experienced throughout our journey to assist a novice caregiver prepare to meet the challenges ahead. I placed those situations within the stages of the disease in which they occurred; included are top-level physiological data gleaned from the book, Mayo Clinic on Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementias, introducing Alzheimer’s degenerative process that causes impaired brain functionality and cognitive disfunction.

Due to the individual nature of each Alzheimer’s case, those scenarios I present may not reflect the precise timing of another’s journey. However, this memoir can help one new to caregiving anticipate similar events and prepare to meet them. In this memoir, I discuss the mistakes I made with suggested alternative choices to help the prospective caregiver arrive at better solutions.

If new medications coming to market effectively slow or introduce a cure to this degenerative disease, researchers today assert that early diagnosis will be critical to achieving a favorable outcome. To that end, I offer indicators that I observed in Judy as early as a decade prior to her diagnosis that could spark the initiative for early diagnosis and possible treatment in future cases, indicators often missed today even by medical professionals. Since the emotional bond between Judy and I played a significant role in our journey through Alzheimer’s, I start this memoir with a prologue illustrating the formation of that relationship that made any unpleasantness in the latter stages of this disease more palatable. You, the reader, may choose to read this prologue or to ignore it.