New to this group

So sorry for the reasons you are finding your way to our little club. But as a fellow newbie, I can confirm you have landed in a safe place and the others here will impart valuable information, priceless experience, and much needed comradery. Each Parkinson's and Alz. are enough to deal with alone but the path is the same - one day/step at a time. Welcome!

You have found a good place to land here, with kind people who share and help. I’m 68 and my husband will be 81 in 3 weeks. He has COPD and Alz. None of it is easy. His brother also had Parkinson’s with Alz. And that added component made it even more difficult. Keep coming back and vent all you want.

My husband started having periods of “fogginess” in his late 60s. He would complain about it periodically. Eight years ago we had him tested and he was told MCI with depression with possibility of Alz. The neurologist told him time would tell. It’s been the past three years that it’s become quite obvious something was wrong. We used to ocean fish in our boat and I started being afraid. He would get confused. Now it’s obvious he has moved into another stage where he has a difficult time comprehending most things. He can’t follow movies or tv shows, gets more paranoid, laughs less, and his short term memory is shot. He was so handy making things out of wood and doing anything around the house and cars and his boat. Now he can’t figure out how to use a screw driver. I go through periods of being overwhelmed and sad, but have learned to take one day at a time. One of the best things I learned from this group is how to be more patient and understanding. We used to bicker because he would accuse me of saying something I never said. Now I easily can say that I don’t remember saying that or apologize for what he thinks I said. His mother had this as well as her father and her three sisters. Then my husbands two brothers had it and now a sister. He’s aware of the fact that he’s like his mom and that makes me sad for him. I also have more energy than him and that can be both good and bad. I’m able to help him more than if I was 80, but I miss doing all the activities we did when he was 68. Do keep coming here and reading and chatting. In the beginning I was a bit overwhelmed with what I read here. Now I come every day because it helps to know I’m not alone dealing with this horrible disease.

My suggestions are different from much of the above. Nowadays, it is rather straightforward to positively diagnose AD. Let me tell my story. At 63, I was noticing a slight decline in short term memory. I mentioned this to my nurse practitioner at my annual physical. She conducted a quick memory test which I easily passed. She thought I was fine, but I pressed the point, so she referred me to the Cleveland Clinic Memory center. There I had perhaps a 10 minute memory test upon entry, which identified a possible problem with short term memory. This lead to scheduling a multi-hour detailed memory test, which positively identified issues short term memory issues. That lead to lots of tests to rule out causes other than AD. These all came back negative, indicating possible AD. The final test for confirming AD was either a PET scan or a lumbar puncture to determine the amount of amyloid plaque and tau in my brain. I went with the lumbar puncture, the results confirmed an AD diagnosis. Now-a-days, there are blood tests which can confirm the presence of amyloid in the bloodstream, but they have not yet been approved by the FDA so they are not covered by insurance.

I am taking Leqembi, one of the two FDA-approved drugs which reduce amyloid in the brain (the other drug is Kisunla). These drugs have risks (possibility of brain swelling / bleeding), and only slow the progression of the disease. However, there are ongoing studies paring Leqembi with anti-tau drugs which offer a possibility of better slowing (or perhaps even stopping) the progression of the disease.