Well Doc Here I am again.

You have nagged me to post again. So I decided to post a post that my wife posted on my blog. Is that toooo many posts. She is my main caregiver and since your blog is more to that arena, I thought it would be ok. But notice her post is not 42 paragraphs like some people we know. Love You Man.

Joe posted a few weeks ago about the fact that we have had some difficulity. He has had some issues and yes I was hurt by them. But in all fairness I guess I am to blame too. As you know he can still find his way around the computer and sometimes it gets him and others into trouble. So as a caregiver and as a spouse I am going to say that we need to ask questions when our other half is doing something that we are not sure of. We need to check the bank statements and credit card statements just to make sure there are no charges there that we do not know about. $10 here and there really add up. Also just like we do with our children we need to know who they are talking to. Whether on the phone or on the computer. So I am sure that we will have a few more arguments about how we nag and are trying to control things but, if we don't damage can be done that can not be forgiven or forgotten. Fortunately we are working on our end. So do not be surprised when he writes that I am being a nag and not liking me or others very much. We do it out of love.

Pay Attention to what is going on around the person you care for.

Lynn

They Say Phsyc's Know What They Are Doing!

Hello,

My name is Joseph Potocny, you see Dr. Joe and I have known each other for sometime now. But let us question his sanity, he is a MD I am an AD (Alhziemers person) and have FTD as well. Now who knows more him on the far left or me on the gentle right.

I thank Doc for asking me to blog here, I guess he is ready to be punished for the well shall we say less than upstanding life he has led. Not true, he is a good guy. 

I have had the disease for over 3 yrs confirmed, by the time you know whose professsion would listen to me. So today like many days has been filled with times of where the hell am i and what am i doing.  I was going to do this as a video, but he told me creatures were not allowed to appear in person.  I read docs' blog daily as he makes posts, some I just do not understand, that is the way it is. Others he is right on.  See he was a victim of this disease on the other side and could not understand why his mom was leaving him. I live on the other side of the tracks and do not understand why people are leaving my brain and world. By the way Doc and I are getting married next week last I knew.

I hope to be back latter, but with a more direct post that I do as normal. Just to prepare you visitors and friends of Dr. Joe, I am very blunt and not always choosey about my words. Nor do I use spell check.  Read his book, I think you will find solace and vindication in it ( wow big words ) must be getting late.  I needed help from my wife with my thought processs on trying to understand it. But I need help in finding the bathroom.

God Bless & Keep You & This Country of Ours!

Joe

http://living-with-alzhiemers.blogspot.com/

Writing About Alzheimer's

My mother died from Alzheimer's in 1987. It was 8 years after she was diagnosed. She died 5 days before her seventieth birthday. She was diagnosed when she was 62. We really don't know exactly how long she had it before the diagnosis was made. By todays definition she had what is known as Early Onset Alzheimer's disease. (It stated before she was 65 years old.)
Back then 20-30 years ago, it used to be called pre-senile onset (before age 65) or senile onset (after age 65).
Interestingly although Alzheimer's was disocvered 100 years ago, there was a time when dementia, of almost any cause, was known as "senility". There was a time when we just used to call it "hardening of the arteries of the brain".

In 1979 when my mother was diagosed with Alzheimer's disease, no one that I knew had ever heard of it. I was 17 at the time and certainly my high school buddies had never heard of it.
I started to write a memoir about it in 1988, less than a year after she died. I was in my last year of medical school and got a little side tracked with finishing the book. I put it aside for almost 20 years. In the mid 2000's I went back to it. I do not know why exactly, I certianly did not have the luxury of time to work on it. I still worked on it however. Perhaps it was becouse I was a father myself, and I started to think about the legacy that parents leave.

In the early 1990's somewhere in my psychiatry residency I authored a short story about my mother's AD published in Bereavement Magazine- Colorado Springs, Co. ( I think it has a new publisher over the years and from what I can find it is now called Living With Loss Magazine)

I used to present at a lot of AD conferences around the area in the late 1990's and early 2000's, and sometimes I would finish up the presentation by reading this short story.

I realized the short story (only a few hundred words) tracing my mother's entire AD journey was not enough, but figured I would never get to finish the book.