Funny thing my DH with aphasia said to me today..

SDianeL

My DH, 78 was diagnosed 2 years ago with dementia. He has aphasia and is now struggling finding words for objects. Today we had a cooler sitting in the living room getting read for Hurricane Idalia and he asked me if "it" was OK where he put it. I said put what. He said the thing. I said what thing honey? He said the thing. I can usually figure out what he's saying but was busy and totally forgot the cooler was there. He has pushed it under a table. He got frustrated and said to me... "I think you need to have YOUR brain checked" LOL. He wasn't joking because he hasn't had a sense of humor in a long time but it was funny to me. It was a very stressful day and that completely took away my stress. Laughter is the best medicine. My DH always had a sense of humor and I miss that part of him. 😥

M1

Be safe in the coming days. My partner has progressive aphasia too, but so far she has in fact maintained her sense of humor, which is a huge blessing. I would miss it too if it disappeared.

Keep us posted how you do....

SDianeL

Today has not been good for him so far. He's obsessing about everything, rearranging things over and over and due to his anxiety is chattering constantly. We live in an apartment and had to bring in our patio furniture and he's not handling it well. Trying to keep him calm but it's not working. I can usually distract him but not today.

PookieBlue

These ups and downs are so challenging. Hope you can find the useful distraction and that tomorrow will be a better day.

Ed1937

It's good that you can find humor in some of the things he says. One night just before bed, I spilled water on my PJs. So I just took them off, and went to bed wearing only underwear. During the night, my wife got up to use the potty, and I got up with her. She looked at me, and said "Where are your panties?"

But then she got to the point where any word she could not find became "three to eleven". She might say she wanted to go to "three to eleven", and if I told her I didn't know what she meant by that, she would get really upset with me because she knew what she meant, and she was sure I did too. It became so common that she would try to leave the house to visit her grandparents who died in the 1970s. Then she wouldn't come back in the house because she was so angry with me. I couldn't get her in without either hurting her or calling the police, which I did three times. It was the thing that caused me to put her in MC. For me it was the worst part of dementia. "No" was easy enough for me to handle, repeating questions were easy enough, and even incontinence was easier than aphasia, and what it brought with it. So laugh while you still can.

Lgb35

My DH has aphasia also. We are early in the process and at this point diagnosed with MCI. For the most part I can figure out what he is saying but there are times it is too far off and I don’t know what he means. He does get very frustrated at me when I don’t understand. He has lost the ability to name almost all animals and has forgotten people in our lives that we don’t see regularly. This disease is so cruel.

ButterflyWings

In our increasingly narrow world, I just agree with everything DH tries to say, though his words fail him more often than not. But long before we got to this phase, I started to just head nod and smile a lot. Of course, we are largely homebound and late Stage 6 so there is little damage that DH can do anymore by following up or following through on anything I have agreed to that may be outlandish. So no harm in saying "um hmm, yeah, you are amazing" even though I have no clue what he is talking about.