Vitruvious

Ed1937

In another thread you said "Please ignore me, everyone else here does. "

I'm wondering if you've been asking questions or asking for help in a thread that was started by someone else, and has had several replies. I doubt that anyone here is intentionally ignoring you. If you have a question, or would just like to have replies to your posts, it's much better to start a new topic. You will get results that way, where you might not if you posted in an ongoing thread. I'm sorry you feel that people were ignoring you."

abc123

Ed, thank you! I was thinking the same thing. Also, sometimes when the boards are really slow because we are all too busy to check in, it may feel like we are being ignored. 

We do not ignore our fellow members. Please post again. Give us another chance, please.

Jo C.

Hello Vetruvius; I did try to find you using the Search function, but sadly, most of the time that particular function does not work well if at all.

I know I recall having seen you in other Posts because of the unique and very cute dog picture avatar.   The only Posting listing I found for you using, Search ,was the following:

https://www.alzconnected.org/discussion.aspx?g=posts&t=2147559613

That is from January, and I am pretty sure you have Posted since then.  We are indeed looking for you and hoping that you will write a Post or Thread where we can find you; we are all here in support of one another and that includes you too.

J.

M1

Ditto here.  I very much appreciated your input Vetruvius.  Had been thinking these same things.  Thanks for taking the initiative Ed.

Quilting brings calm

FYI- to start your own post, go to the top of a thread and press add new instead of pressing add reply under individual comments. That will allow people to see that you have a question or a need to vent.  Often people don’t open a thread they have already reviewed  and they miss additional questions added in replies. 

Ed1937

Quilting, I think you actually need to be on the "Spouse or Partner Caregiver" forum page, where you can see all the threads that are available for reading. Once there, you should hit the "New Topic" button to start a new thread. Following is a screenshot.

Ed1937

Quilting brings calm

Ed, you are of course correct.  I started  typing my comment while I was thinking and that wasn’t a good idea at all.  I should have cancelled out and attempted to add a topic so I knew what I was talking about rather than wing it 

Vitruvius

Thank you all very much for being concerned enough to seek me out. 

Reading this forum has been very, very valuable to me on the journey with my wife as she declines into Semantic Dementia. She seems to be regressing rather fast and reading here has prepared me for a number of things that have come to pass.

I have actually started several threads recently, but gotten very few replies to any of them.  I am deeply thankful for those that did reply however. I asked about silent seizures recently for example in a new thread. 

I most recently asked about "Practical preparation for MC" as another example of a thread I started. I want to thank the few that responded but I know there are probably many others who may also have input I would have valued.

Semantic Dementia has similarities to other dementias but also differences. Due to it's relative rarity there is not a lot of formal guidance out there. Reading here on this forum from caregivers to LOs with a variety of dementia types is a great resource and I want to thank everyone who tells their stories here. Even rants provide useful clues to use in my caregiving.

So thank you everyone for your concern and your guidance. 

michiganpat

Hi Vitruvious and am glad to meet you but sorry it has to be on a dementia site. I am fairly new. My DH is in the early stages of this disease and I have scoured every bit of news I can regarding dementia. I am not familiar with semantic dementia but will be looking it up. This is the first online support group I have joined. I read most all the stories and they have been very helpful. I don't reply often but they do impact me. Just wanted to say Hi from a newbie.

jmlarue

I had to research the "semantic dementia" term since I was not familiar with that either. I see that it is related to frontotemporal dementia. It's interesting to note how so many of these diagnosis labels are interconnected. My DH was diagnosed with vascular dementia based upon an MRI imaging that showed multiple "flares" indicating areas of brain damage from chronic mini-strokes (TIAs) over a number of years. The fact that this damage is most pronounced in that area of the brain that controls speech, reasoning, and executive function explains why the earliest symptoms of dementia were speech impairment (the loss of nouns), failure to initiate common tasks, and misplacing/losing items of importance. The loss of coherent speech has been the most profound and alarming because in less than a year DH has progressed from struggling to find the names of things to mostly impossible-to-decipher word salad. Worse, he is no longer able to interpret and understand what others say to him. Over this time, I have had to amend my own speech pattern to such brevity, I am reminded of the way I had to talk with my children when they were toddlers and just learning to speak - single words, simple phrases. DH's word salad still has the rhythm and some emotional inflection of normal speech and occasionally he can engage in the automatic phrases of chit chat (for example asking a neighbor or stranger, "How are you?" or saying, "It's a nice day.") Consequently, folks meeting him for a brief encounter may not recognize that he is impaired. The thing is, the speech issue was just the first and most obvious symptom of his dying brain. As this brain damage has progressed, other symptoms such as a volatile emotional state suggests the limbic system is now involved and requires medications to calm his anger and aggression. What I'm learning is that there seems to be a lot of symptoms that are common across the various forms of dementia and the severity seems to be a matter of degrees. I think it's the fundamental reason why, as a caregiver, we are in a perpetual state of alarm and confusion. Nothing ever seems to remain the same for very long. Always a new behavior to try to understand. Worse, there is no standard model for dealing with these symptoms. No two people with dementia are exactly the same or respond to the same treatments or caregiving.

abc123

I have learned from you! I had not heard of semantic dementia. I'm sorry that your DW has it. I'm sorry that we all have to be here at all but I admire and respect everyone here. I'm grateful for this forum.

Thank you for giving us a second chance!

Is that your dog? He truly has the sweetest/cutest teddy bear face!

Ed1937

Quilting, if you want to delete your post(s), I'll do the same. Just like it never happened.

Vitruvius

Yes my avatar is our dog. He is just as goofy and lovable as his photo suggests. He is also a great comfort and distraction for my DW and anchor to the real world for me. 

Thanks again to everyone for their guidance, stories and support.

Quilting brings calm

Ed- I deleted my posts ( and I will come back and delete this one later).  Can you leave  the one you posted with the screenshot of the add topic button?  You can edit out your wording to me, or not as you choose.  You’ve gone to the trouble of showing people how to add a new topic.  Maybe someone who needs to know will see it.

Ed1937

If you have a question, and you post on an ongoing thread, there's a chance it will not be seen. To start a thread of your own (which is what you should do), look at the top of this page or another for "Spouse or Partner Caregiver Forum". Click on any of those words, and you will be taken to the page where you can see the available threads on the forum. Look toward the top of that page for the button "NEW TOPIC". Click on that, give your topic a name, then post whatever you want.