Anosognosia Is Overwhelming Me

I found it especially difficult to realize that my DH would never know how hard it was on me, or be able to comfort me or appreciate what I was doing for him. It's a lonely existence. Sending you hugs and warmth.

My dear wife suffered this "condition" early on. We received the diagnosis of MCI about eight years ago after I shared my concerns for her health and we finally visited a neurologist. From the start she rejected the diagnosis, test results from the neuropsychologist and comments from the doc. She "rationalized' the symptoms, as she had been doing prior to the diagnosis, as "I am not repeating myself, if I don't make sure I tell each child the same information, then that one gets mad at me so I just make sure I tell them all". She rejected the psychologist results because "I am not a good test taker and I tried to tell her that but she would not listen, the results are wrong". This is when I learned about "anosognosia". My wife's reaction continued to grow worse as she characterized her diagnosis as people thinking she was "crazy". We finally shared the diagnosis with close family only. She agreed at that time that we should. That began the worst almost three years of our life. She believed the family had told everyone (not true) and any innocent comment made she took as an insult about her and that the person thought she was "crazy". This got progressively worse and, obviously, no amount of talking, reasoning, etc. helped. The doctor tried to talk to her without success. It became so bad that she refused to see and family or allow they to visit her. She wanted to disown her children. Friends were talking about her, telling stories. There were times when she became so upset she wanted to leave me and go "home". She even packed the car one day with all her clothes before the anger subsided. For almost three years she would not go anywhere, see anyone, hated them all, and, in the end, finally told me she blamed me for all this. I share this to caution everyone that this phenomena is real, it can be horrible, traumatic, test every ounce of patience and possibly fracture a relationship forever. After her condition advanced, the anosognosia symptoms began to subside, eventually allowing reconciliation with family and children. We weathered through this storm thankfully and continued our path through this disease until the end about three weeks ago. Sadly, my wife missed three years of life with her family because of anosognosia, likely three years where she was still capable of talking, engaging, enjoying their company. We all lost that, never to be regained. No one told me that this was a possibility. I would have done more to learn about it, educated our children so they understood what was happening to their mother and maybe navigated those three years differently. The best thing the doctor could do for anyone facing this life, would be to refer them to this forum and help the caregiver or spouse, use it to find explanations and answers.