Preparing for doctor visits.

This month is our 6 month "check up" and at the end of the week Dave has an appointment with both his medical Dr and his neurologist.  The visit to the medical doctor is usually pretty quick and "painless" as he just checks how the blood pressure and cholesterol meds are working and checks his general heath.

On Friday we have the neurologist appointment.  this appointment, on the other hand, i am not looking forward to at all.  There have been significant changes in Dave since our last visit, he is having more confusion that is very noticeable.

With the time change causing it to become dark earlier and with Gabriella busy in the evening with school functions Dave is always wanting to make sure the porch light is on but he can never find the light switch.  He constantly goes to the wrong wall in the wrong room and turns on lights in the house instead of the porch and each night I have to try and find an easy way to tell him which wall switch is for the porch.  He gets turned around in the house all the time, going into the "computer room" with his coffee thinking he is in the living room and always wanting to go out the front door thinking he is going into the laundry room.  When he is making coffee i can't talk to him because he forgets what he is doing. 

He is also having more and more problems with his talking and he is forgetting more and more of his words and he is starting to ask the same question over and over. If he doesn't have contact with family and friends he can no longer recall their names, sometimes he can picture their faces when I say their names but sometimes he can't even do that.

So what do we do? Its now time to start making signs.  I have been putting off making signs but to help him to continue to be independent and allow him to continue contributing to the household it is time to make them. Fortunately I am crafty and plan on using maybe some cute chalkboard type signs.

Dave can still do the dishes, he feels like he can still contribute to dinner time but there are more and more dishes he can't remember where they go so he leaves them on the counter or on the table. Tonight he was getting ready to do the dishes and was going to put a stack of plates on top of a pot lid (the handle for the lid was on top of the lid which would make the plates unbalanced). I grabbed them just before they fell to the floor and broke! For safety reasons I am thinking it is time to move to corelle or melamine dishes. We did find some really nice melamine dishes at target but they do not come in sets so we will have to buy a few at a time. i think this will be a good choice as they are lighter and unbreakable.

There is also the issue of his taste.  It is not unusual for people with Alzheimer's to start losing their sense of smell and taste. I am not sure if Dave has lost his sense of smell completely because there are times when i am cooking dinner that he will say "mmm, smells good."   but there have been times when we were outside and i would comment that i could smell wood burning but he could not or that there was a "funny smell" but he couldn't smell anything.  He has noticed himself that he will sometimes not be able to smell certain scents and sometimes can't tell what i am cooking because he can't smell.  Since we know that the sense of smell and taste are connected he is also experiencing a loss of taste.  H can still taste salty food and sweet things although he will sometimes say that he can't taste the sugar in his coffee and will ask me how the coffee taste. 

I will also be asking the doctor about the jerking that Dave is doing. He has always had thrashing at night which continues. When he naps (on the couch) i notice that he has some mild jerking and sometimes it looks like he is talking because his lips are moving and his hands are in constant motion. The jerking he does is more of a concern. I am not sure how to describe what he does, it is not a spasm because it is quick like a jerk of his muscles-have you ever started to fall asleep in a chair or on the couch and you suddenly jerk? Well, that is what Dave does except he is awake and the jerking is getting hard enough that he almost drop his cup out of his hand and once it was so bad it gave him a headache. I have no clue what would cause this jerking. At first i just thought it was a reaction to being tired but Dave said he has them all the time no matter what he is doing.  He continues with tremors which he feels are getting worse.

Lots of changes in the last six months. We know this disease progresses differently for everyone and that the younger the onset the quicker it progresses but you are never prepared no matter how much you educate yourself.

Monica