Joshbi(1)

toolbeltexpert

Joshbi you asked this question which I think is a good question especially for those out there that are just wondering.

"Would anyone here be willing to share the first indication that something was just a little off with your spouse but you didn’t think it was very significant since it didn’t interfere with ADL’s at the time"

I'll share something I missed or just dismissed. My dw would go to town shopping right after I had filled the car, I always reset the trip meter. She would go shopping and come back with 45 miles and it's only 16 round trip, whenever I asked she would get upset and say I must not have reset it. I would just brush it off. Now I know she was getting lost.

Ed1937

This should be a good thread. My wife talked on the phone often with one of our kids. Several times I would ask her what they had to say. She would often say she didn't know or she didn't remember. But throughout the day she seemed fine. I just dismissed it as having "small talk". Nothing really important.

ThisLife

My H lost a job and couldn't find another. Believe job loss was related to AD. He was never a ball of fire, so I thought he wasn't making an effort. After two years of badgering, I just treated him as retired. (He did retire from the AF and another job.)  I told him he was responsible for house, meals, shopping, laundry, etc. He did fine for maybe two years. 

We used a money envelop for groceries/household. Shopping became a minimum 5 phone calls and the envelop filled with change and small bills. Like $50. I thought he was too lazy to hand over correct change. Laundry wasn't done even with notes left. Washing not moved to dryer. Clothes left in dryer. Trash taken out and no new bag in container. I thought he was being a jerk. The light bulb moment was when he wasn't able to follow through with small repairs. He'd always been a handyman. His Dad had dementia. Aha! 

I think there is a lot we see in hindsight.  Not because we ignore things. We don't know. No PSA on signs to look for that indicate dementia probably because it can be so variable. Even the article I see now about things that are signs of dementia are too generic.

Iris L.

Trouble paying bills or keeping up with a checkbook is a significant sign.

Iris

60 falcon

Minor driving issues, nothing specific, just minor carelessness.  Unexplained emotions, like crying for no reason. Looking back, I'm pretty convinced that the crying was related to her EOAD and the first visible sign that things weren't right, of course I missed the clue and just assumed that I might have been the problem.

M1

Not knowing how to work an unfamiliar shower in a hotel (had installed plumbing her whole career)

Just Bill

I was picking her up from the airport and while we were driving home she kept asking "where are we ?" and "where are you going ?". This was a very familiar route to her. I just thought overtired or side effect from her epilepsy medication. This was 2 years before her diagnosis. Right before her diagnosis she was having trouble at work reading the schedule and following instructions. She was also starting to repeat questions over and over. "What time are we supposed to be there ?" was something she would say not 2 minutes from when I told her last. Luckily her job was compassionate and offered her early retirement because she was too impaired to do her job. That same day she locked her keys in the car. So it started out something off now and again to something being off is the normal. After her diagnosis strange behavior progressed pretty fast.

ghphotog

She would call me at work very distraught as we were thousands of dollars overdrawn. Then, things like dates, times and paying bills. She had trouble writing checks or would mail off the electric bill but forgot to include the check.

Then getting flustered trying to pay for groceries at the check out line, forgetting how to put gas in the car, etc. . .

Since then I've taken over everything she took care of for years. She would make herself a mayonnaise sandwich without anything else. Now she can't do even the simplest things.

Anna2022

My DH gave me a check for certain expenses out of one account, forgetting that he had electronically transferred funds to the other account for these expenses for about 10 years. He denied ever doing the transfer electronically and when I insisted, he couldn't figure out how to do it. This happened for a couple of months, then he remembered to do it electronically. So, the intermittent nature of this sign was confusing....

tigersmom

Now that I think about it, there were early issues with the TV and remote that should have been a flag. For a while prior to diagnosis, I noticed that DH seemed to prefer to watch TV with the sound off. I thought it was bizarre, but maybe the sound bothered him. Also, there were a couple of times just prior to diagnosis that the guide program on the cable box got so screwy that I had to restart the box manually to fix it. This happened a few times within a month. But the earliest signs were probably his inability to navigate, the trouble he had writing checks correctly, and his inability to use an ATM.

Bob in LW

I first noticed my SO's memory problems when she couldn't remember where to find things in her kitchen, although she had lived there for 12 years.  This was about two years before she was diagnosed.  I believe that her memory loss progressed rapidly after her home was destroyed in one of California's wildfires and we moved to another part of the state.

Crushed

2009  DW had always been a hard driving professional and had just been appointed to the top job in her field. in the Federal government
But all of a sudden she just  liked being with ME
Everything from romance to shopping to travel  I LOVED IT
of course we later called it shadowing
 
  But my daughter # 2 noticed that she was not into being "mother of the bride" 
  SEPT 2010 we are in Alaska   and she has lost the ability to add
 I was terrified  and got her to doctors right way
  later we realized she had been making math errors  on taxes since 2009  (She was a math major )

no effect on ADLs for at least 4 more years.

PlentyQuiet

Lots of little things like minor word finding or less than stellar conversation recall. DH was an RN and it was the height of Covid so I chalked it all up to stress. He needed a colonoscopy for a minor issue and was unable to follow the prep instructions, 35 years as an RN should have made this easy. After that I went with to every appointment and brought up the issues I was noticing. Four months later we had a diagnosis of EOAD.

Marie58

There were a lot of little things...trouble with left and right when driving, misplacing items, not being able to figure out a new phone, math related things. He also got quieter/withdrawn, thought people didn't like him.

CStrope

We started to notice things soon after DH retired, but he was quick to blame it on retirement.  That excuse seemed plausible.  There were things that should have been red-flags but weren't.  The main one being his personality/attitude, he was such a jerk that I seriously thought about divorce.

White Crane

The very first time I noticed something was about a year after he had recovered from a mild stroke.  We were on vacation and had stopped at a grocery store.  When we left the parking lot, he turned the wrong way and headed back the way we came.  He had always had an excellent sense of direction.  That was probably 2002.  Then in 2013, I had neck surgery and he had to take charge of the checkbook and paying the bills.  It took me three months to straighten out the mess he made with that.  At that same time, he got lost picking up a pizza.  I knew then beyond a doubt something was terribly wrong.

Kevcoy

First time I noticed something was "off" was during a road trip to Las Vegas so DH could attend the Star Trek Convention like he had done for many years.  I started off driving and when we switched I fell asleep in the passenger seat.  I was awakened when vehicles were honking as they were passing us at a high rate of speed.  I looked over and noticed we were only going about 40 MPH in a 75 zone.  Next thing I noticed was he couldn't remember what floor our room was on or our room number and kept calling me to find out.  The last thing was he wanted to leave the convention two days early which never happened before.  I didn't put the pieces together until years later.

Davegrant

Early signs:

This is a question that I have asked myself many times. There was a moment a  few weeks after I retired (five years ago) when DW stopped in the middle of making dinner , I asked her what's the matter and she said, "I don't know what to do next". She acknowledged that she lost the ability to sequently complete an activity. From that time I began to do the cooking and over time all the household activities.  Were there other signs that I missed?  In retrospect there were some personality changes that happened that while I found them to be personally embarrassing , I thought they were due to marriage and/or advancing age issues. The beginning issues were so suttle it took me a long time to separate marriage problems from dementia as I knew little if anything about dementia. Even after five years of dementia issues there are times in the day that seem so normal. I understand that she also has agosognosia and she holds her positions with vigor and certainity. She is somewhat open with me but when another person enters the room she is able to present a good picture. Not so much with close family members but certainly with others. In general, repitition, suspicion, paranoia, delusions do not physically show on a person. If this all sounds a little confusing,  it does to me as well. She limits the delusional behavior to me and recently to one granddaughter. 

Dave

Ed1937

Davegrant wrote:

 DW stopped in the middle of making dinner , I asked her what's the matter and she said, "I don't know what to do next".

Something very similar happened to us. My wife was going to make pancakes for breakfast. She opened the fridge, grabbed the buttermilk, then just stood there. I asked her what was the matter. She didn't know what to do next. And she was an excellent cook! But that was about 18 months after diagnosis, and she never cooked again. That was just about exactly 3 years ago.

Dio

Looking back now that I know what to look for, so many small things that were dismissed:

• Burned a pot to a blackened crisp bottom boiling water;
• Stopped or avoided socializing even with family, claiming that he needed to recharge by being home alone;
• Missed on-ramp and got lost trying to find our way back to the freeway;
• Became extremely and unusually agitated whenever I couldn't navigate/work the map app on smartphone or if he missed an exit;
• Started getting very angry whenever friends did not see his points--discussions all became heated arguments and debates;
• Forgetting to pick up items on grocery list;
• Paid only his portion of a credit card bill and not my portion (which I discovered later);
• Forgot to run a job at work;
• Talking in his sleep;
• Went the wrong way coming out of strip mall parking lot...

I had attributed all of these to stress and anxiety.

Ed1937

Dio, he is no longer driving, is he?