Thanks. I’ve always been fascinated by it, and have convinced myself I will get it before I die. I’m just hoping I at some point have the wherewithal to take myself out prior to it getting too bad.
That’s the way I feel about it too. Will
I know when I have become too much of a burden to do something.
Dad is happy enough a lot of the time and is not a burden.
I would be devastated if he “took himself” out. And so, I imagine, would any of your family.
My grandad, who also had Alzheimer’s was actually much happier.
Right, sorry I was not meaning to imply anything.
That’s a personal thing of mine. I believe in assisted suicide and would likely take advantage of it if I had anything terminal that was without a cure. That’s just a me thing.
A guy I know (knew) was diagnosed with ALS in the last year or so. It advanced much more quickly than expected, so he took the medically-assisted way out. In a case like that I can definitely see myself making the same choice. With something more mild/gradual I think I’d want to stick around.
Hey. Not taking offence, just trying to offer a perspective.
I also believe in assisted suicide and so does dad.
I think that having Alzheimer’s doesn’t really fit into that. Dad hangs out, goes for a walk, watches some TV, drinks his wine and checks his Wikipedia watchlist on repeat.
This isn’t him living in pain, dying from cancer.
Thats actually really nice to hear. You get a lot of horror stories about dementia and alzheimers from the family that lives through it, and Ive always kind of perspectivized it from that point of view. Mayhap I need to do a bit of digging into what the person who goes through it deals with.
Maybe it’s gonna be different when he can’t remember who we are and stuff like that… So, maybe check in with this thread in a few years.
Alz goes a not very friendly way sometimes. Had an Uncle get kicked out of a nursing home for becoming violent.
Yeah. My grandad spent about 3 months in the low level violent psych ward after he beat the shit out of an old lady at 3am
But again, in fairness, he didn’t remember it and so it wasn’t bad for him
My Uncles deal was brutal on my cousins.
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My dad got really bad near the end. He didn’t recognize anyone except for my mom a bit (married 55 years), but he would leave the house and just start walking, which is something he did not do previously. Ultimately needed to key lock all the doors to keep him inside.
One of the toughest things for me was earlier but had to do with driving. Obviously my dad drove my whole life so it was hard to pull the trigger when to shelve him.
On my walk home from the gym one night, I noticed a car hanging a few 100 feet behind an older Asian woman as she walked out of one parking lot and along the sidewalk. She was holding a bunch of papers. I hung back just to make sure something bad didn’t happen to her.
Eventually the woman caught up to me and I could see that she was really confused. It looked like she was holding a bunch of Christmas decorations and it was summer. I asked if she was ok and she got a little scared and dropped some of her papers. I don’t think she spoke any English.
At that point the car that I was worried about approached and I relaxed when I saw it was an older Asian man. He was just letting her have her confused walk and keeping an eye on her.
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That is both depressing and incredibly heart warming.
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My mothers Alzheimer’s/dementia was a slow burn for probably the last 20 years of her life. In the last year when it got really bad my father tried to keep it from me, which wasn’t that hard given she was a lifelong alcoholic/addict so it was easy to explain odd behavior, and the fact that I was an active alcoholic/addict myself during that time. And we were on opposite coasts. I became aware of how bad it was when she called me in the middle of a random day and was hallucinating that there was a small boy in the house - definitely the most terrifying phone call I’ve ever received. After that my dad clued me in to what was really happening.
In what I now consider a blessing to her and my dad, she passed away within 6 months or so of that phone call and we learned she had a bunch of micro strokes before the big one that took her.
About to head out to a vacation with my parents up to Michigan. Parkinson’s dad wants to have a handful of money* when he goes on vacation. I was not aware of this before today. Mom has tried to say you don’t need to carry that much money…Caretaker took Dad to doctors appointment, ATM machine, and took him home.
Well he dropped his wallet getting out of the car. The wallet amount after found went from 1500 to 80…fucking hate everyone
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My father in law (85) is in early stage dementia, and today he posted a 2-3 minute Facebook reel of himself staring at his phone. I guess this is better than him sucking down an algorithmic feed of MAGA derp bullshit.
Now my wife is on the phone with her mother trying to explain to her how to get signed back in to netflix.
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My uncle went from posting angry screeds on FB to liking everyone’s posts and making goofy comments. As my mom gets fuzzier, I haven’t heard her talk about politics for a while. One of the few non-horrible aspects of dementia I guess.
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Dementia cured my granddads bipolar too.
Dementia “cures” a lot of things. My dad lost a ton of weight once he had dementia.