DW Diagnosed with ALZ last 6 months.

Hi Sailor,

Welcome and very sorry you have had to seek us out. I am a bit shocked at how quickly your DW has progressed. I am not a medical professional; however, I have not heard of dementia/alz progressing so quickly. Please request the doctor to order an MRI, spinal tap (if needed) and to check for other possible causes. Has she had a head injury, which could have caused the quick downward spiral.

I reported my husband's issues to our motor vehicles site but they did nothing about it. He had an eye injury which caused blindness in that eye so he gave up the driving issue. Thank God.

I have to note that although most PWD who are the subject of posts on this site have a fairly slow progression of their dementia, there are some like my DW whose path through dementia seems different and much faster than others I read about here. My DW has the Semantic Variant of Primary Progressive Aphasia, aka Semantic Dementia (SD). She is now only 71. As the name suggests it profoundly affects her communication abilities. It has not exactly followed the stages given for Alzheimer's, but it's close, particularly in the later stages. 

Early 2019, just four years ago DW seemed pretty normal. She was beginning to act a little quirky, and I chalked it up to her recent retirement. Neither of us had anyone with dementia in the family so I honestly didn't see her behavior as troubling. She was very fit and athletic and we walked or hiked daily.

Fast forward just four years and my DW is now in early stage 7 and on hospice. She can no longer walk more than a short distance and then only with two people helping her. She cannot feed herself. She sleeps much more. She can not communicate in any meaningful way. 

The point is that your DW's journey will show many characteristics common to PWD, but her path is likely to be unique in subtle ways. It's your job now to suss out her peculiar ways and how to best manage them. 

As for driving, I didn't have this problem as my DW gave up driving early when I offered to take her anywhere she wanted to go. Since she wanted to be with be all the time anyway this seemed to work. This happened before she began to misidentify me as say one of my nonexistent brothers. 

Otherwise deflect, defer, redirect is all I can offer.

Regarding boredom, read about failure-free activities for PWDs. They have to do activities on their level. Some have low initiation, so you will have to start them off on an activity.

Iris

I told my husband that the doctor said he can't drive anymore and if he did and was in an accident even if it wasn't his fault we could be sued and lose everything. (which is true the Neuro Psychologist did say that). Once their medical record lists cognitive issues, they should no longer drive. He's still not happy but he complied. I hid the spare set of keys and keep mine hidden. I'm afraid my DH is declining faster now. He's forgetting names of children & grandchildren and is having difficulty getting his meds together. He can't count them. He doesn't recognize certain foods and can't find the word for them. He has developed an aversion to food. When he eats breakfast he shakes his head left to right as if saying "no" to himself about eating. He was diagnosed 2 years ago but looking back has had symptoms for about 5 years. It's terrifying.

Sailor, my partner still knows me as her partner but doesn't know my name, and doesn't recognize anyone in pictures any more including me. There are others on the forum in the same boat, that their spouses think they are someone else, and this becomes a big issue particularly at bedtime if they are still sleeping in the same bed. Hopefully some of them will chime in on strategies, it would seem to me it might be best to just play along. Does it work to tell her that her husband will be back soon? I know others have even changed clothes or left the house to come back and be recognized temporarily. No permanent solution though.

Driving was a big issue here for a while. What worked for me when he said he wanted to drive were lies.

The car has been acting up and I want to drive to see if it does it again, and I need you to sit in the passenger's seat to listen for me.

Oh, I'm already sitting in the driver's seat, you can drive home (he'd forget of course).

If you don't mind, I'll drive because we need to get there quickly and it's a way I know (He knew he would need directions no matter which way we went.)

We never revoked his driver's license. I'd always tell him, "Of course you can still drive, and you're a really good driver. You can drive home."

The lies worked better the further along he was. The real struggle was in the in-between stage when he no longer understood he shouldn't drive, but wasn't so easily put off by the lies.