His speech makes no sense. Frontotemporal Dementia?

KathyF1

My DH had his appointment today with the Neuropsychologist. Three months ago she saw him, he spent a lot of time telling her the story that he was telling literally everyone he encountered, that he had been to the moon. Not a typical symptom of Alzheimer’s. But still that was my assumption since he has all the other symptoms. Memory loss, layers clothes, shadows me, incontinence is starting. Been going on for years, progressing as I would expect. Now he doesn’t talk about the moon anymore, but his speech is jumbled. Some sentences maybe sense. But most sentences are words that are not words, just made up words. No way to understand what he’s trying to say. This is new. Surprised the doc about the progression. She felt sure he has frontotemporal dementia. His first symptoms were delusions about going to heaven, meeting angels, this was 10 years ago. Made me think he was uh, crazy. Now I think this diagnosis might be explaining the early “crazy talk”. Any insights anyone?

Iris L.

Jumbled speech is called aphasia. Ask the neurologist about primary progressive aphasia.

Iris

CStrope

Did he ever have an MRI that showed the main location of atrophy? My DH also has FTD with Semantic variant PPA. He has lots of delusions and speech issues that I am unable to understand. How has his personality changed? That's also a big sign of FTD

LaneyG

Dh has vascular dementia and Alz. He has significant problems with word finding, and delusions. In the past month or so he has started with the real nonsensical comments.

ButterflyWings

@KathyF1

DH with Alzheimer's had delusions, hallucinations, conflagration (made up stories combining some elements of factual history) and progressive aphasia. Neither his neuropsych team nor any test results have ever suggested FTD in addition to the confirmed Alz.

Have you checked for a silent UTI since it sounds like the word salad may have come on suddenly? Urinary tract infections can cause all sorts of odd, sudden progression which subsides once the proper antibiotic is taken.

For the record, DH went through a monologue phase where you could not get in a word edgewise, lots of repetitive stories - mostly the truth, then increasingly a lot of word retrieval issues along with the embellished stories throughout the mid-stages of Alzheimer's. Later (stage 6) he had a few instances of non-sensical days with word salad/jumbled words (he did have a UTI at the time), and now in early Stage 7 says mainly 1 word responses along with the occasional totally appropriate complete sentence, or question.

More often than not if you asked him a question or tried to hold a conversation during the last year, he might start to reply, then trail off mid-sentence as he can't find the words or hold the thought. Sad. Poor guy was a brilliant public speaker and now lives a fairly silent life. I play lots of music and songs with familiar lyrics, plus still talk to him as if he understands what I'm chattering about. I can tell sometimes he does, as he will chuckle or even nod. But many times (most?) it is just comforting noise and attention from a face and voice that he knows and loves. I'll take it. And as crazy as it used to make me, what I wouldn't give for one of his monologue hours, right about now.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/primary-progressive-aphasia/symptoms-causes/syc-20350499#:~:text=Primary%20progressive%20aphasia%20is%20a,involved%20in%20speech%20and%20language.

KathyF1

Thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts. I do wonder if it’s possible to have both Alzheimer’s and Frontotemporal Dementia. I know it doesn’t really matter, the journey is about the same, but I am curious. So far not a big change in personality. If he has FTD I have read that I could expect that.

GothicGremlin

Definitely possible to have Alzheimer's and FTD - my sister was diagnosed with both. She was also early-onset.

Her nouns all disappeared by the end of stage 5, but there were a lot of word-finding issues long before that. I tended to use humor when I was trying to figure out what she was trying to tell me. I'd start off with something silly like "is it bigger than a bread box"? That would almost always get a laugh, and would relieve some of the stress of not being able to find a word. Then we'd go from there.