This episode takes us back in time, back to a time when Alzheimer's disease was not part of our life.

 I will answer the following questions in this episode.

·       Looking back, was there any hint of what might be lurking in our future?

·       What were the early signs, if any, that something was not quite right with my wife's cognitive abilities?

·       If I could travel back in time, what would I tell myself as I started my caregiver journey?

Some of the topics that are covered are

·       Our backstory – life before Alzheimer’s

·       Working with doctors in the early days of the journey

·       How I dealt with repeated questions

·       What helped me to adopt a healthier perspective

Excerpts from this podcast …

Our Backstory

As I reflect back on the first 30 years that we spent together, our life before Alzheimer's. The following thing seemed to become very meaningful and helpful to how we dealt with Alzheimer's as it began to affect our lives.

Shanna always struggled math. When she was a realtor in  2003. I would do most of the math for her. This was a good thing because it actually helped us to learn to work together side by side. This would become a critical skill once Alzheimer's started to appear in our lives.

What she lacked for in math skills, she more than made up with her work ethic and attention to detail. She became fascinated with genealogical research and spent over a decade working on my Italian family history, as well as helping her mother with their own family history. This became kind of like a full-time job for her for many, many years. This showed me that she had an incredible memory and brain power. Again, this was another opportunity for us to learn to work together because when we started using computers to do this, with my background. I was able to contribute.

Early Signs

Well that brings us to the year, 2012. Before that year, I would have never expected that she had any kind of serious cognitive issues. So what were some of the early signs that something was not quite right with Her cognition?

I started to notice. Sometimes she would repeat a question from time to time. At first, it didn't happen very often. And my response would be, well, I told you yesterday that we were going to do this. Et cetera. Again, it wasn't an issue. She also was starting to misplace her keys in her eyeglasses. Every once in a while.  She had just turned 52 years old. And we were both getting a little bit older. So, this seemed kind of normal.

As the year progressed and continued. This started to become more frequent. But it was random.

 I was the only one who really noticed it. For many months it didn't bother me. That would change over the years and I had to learn how to deal with that.

They started notice her asking. repeated questions as they interacted with her over the holidays.  I can remember seeing the puzzled look on my children and their spouse's face is when they would have conversations with her and this would come up.  This was the first time that we as a family started to discuss what we were seeing. This was to me the first confirmation that others were starting to notice what I had noticed. It was at this time that I started to get concerned and also at the same time, irritated.

Knowing what I know now what would I tell myself?

I would tell myself, Ken. You need to be really patient. Especially with the repeated questions.

This would get to be much more frequent as time went on, and I'm sure those of you who are caregivers know exactly what I'm talking about. This became a very big negative emotional trigger for me. It got so bad that I got to the point that when I was asked the same question. It would set me off and I'm embarrassed to admit that I often lost my composure. I was being triggered. and I was in a state of fear.

Years later. I would learn about how. Our thoughts drive our emotions and that intern conditions how we respond. This ultimately shapes how we experience the world around us. The amazing thing is that this becomes very cyclical and if we don ‘control our thoughts we can become slaves to our emotions, and triggers.  Allowing these things to have power over our life's experiences. I'll expand upon these concepts in future episodes as this was one of the key things that has enabled me to survive and eventually thrive while still caring for my wife.