1. This was the beginning but since then, we have learned so,much. Nevertheless, I’m so happy I did this from the beginning. We were both in a bad place and we have come so far and learned so much, but still have questions. 2/15/2020
There is never a good time to have Alzheimer Disease. But at age 63 or earlier it is more devastating than I could ever imagine. I want to learn how to cope with this life thief in hopes of spending the next 10 years in happiness and hope rather than constant turmoil. 10 years may even be wishful thinking but that's just the thing when will it end, how long will this go on? There's no cure. The time frame is unknown. All that we're sure of is that is will only get worse.
In 2008 we sold everything and started out in our RV to travel and see the country and enjoy the good life. Some people said we were crazy for doing it and to tell the truth - we were both scared about what might be out there for us. But we were willing to take the chance and so we did. We were told that the first 6 months would be the hardest. During that time being together 24/7 in that small space we would learn a lot about each other. We would either divorce or we would kill one another in that time or we might just make it. That first six months was very hard and I did not think we'd make it and both of those things crossed my mind more than once. I just wasn't sure where I'd dump the body. During the 2nd 6 months it was a little easier and we started to relax. As we traveled my navigation skills got worse, no matter what I read on the map or TomTom it seemed to be wrong. But there seriously is a problem with any navigation system sometime. We made too many wrong turns, too many dead ends. This started to get to Gerry along with many other things. I noticed he would rage at what I felt was the smallest thing. He didn't seem to be as grounded as he normally was, he couldn't seem to understand why we would be going a certain direction when he felt we should be going another. He screamed at he in a way he never did before and I was having a very difficult time understanding this. I'm not saying that he never had a short fuse and a bit of a temper when things went wrong, but this was much worse.
The day that I knew that something was really wrong was when we went to a small mall so that I could get a haircut. He walked into the salon with me and said while I was having my hair done he would walk around the mall. After a while he walked in and asked the lady who was sitting right in front of me if he could use her phone to call his wife's cell phone. Even though my hair was cut I looked no different and was looking right at him. I said to him "here I am". It was like he looked through by me, I could tell he didn't recognize me at that moment. He told the lady that he was sure this was where he left his wife but he couldn't find her and he pulled out his wallet to get the phone number that he kept written on a piece of paper. At this point I realized he wasn't joking. Of course being such a jokester all his life it was hard to know. But something about this just seemed different. Then he just turned and walked back out into the mall to look some more. I watched him as he rambled around near the salon looking. After a few minutes he came back in and asked the ladies if they knew where I had gone. I told him to sit over there in the chair and wait and he just walked over and sat down, like a child waiting. Later I asked him if he remembered what happened. He said I couldn't find you in the mall. I said I was sitting right there when you came in and he said he didn't see me. I guess he noticed that I was worried so he said he was just kidding around with me, he knew what he was doing. This was the first time I noticed his covering up for his actions. He was aware that something wasn't right but I guess it scared him enough to try to dismiss it for my sake. That was July 2009, he saw the doctor for the first time in August. The doctor put him on Aricept right away. That was the beginning.
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