Does this sound like dementia?

[maryjoan]

This is my life right now. DH has Asperger's and I think he has started down the road with linguistic variant frontotemporal dementia. I documented for two months the changes in personality, the confusion and the cognitive lapses he is experiencing and went to talk to our GP by myself. She is concerned, and has set up an appointment for more testing, with a referral to a neurologist if the tests are suggestive of dementia.

The hostessing is really a pain. He will admit how confused he is to me and wants assistance in everything to the point where I feel he has turned me into a 24/7 personal aid & yet when faced with a professional who can get him help? He is fine and I'm exaggerating the problems, it is just his AS and stress.

The difficulty I face is that because of the AS he has different definitions of what it is to be a person and how other people beyond himself expect to be treated. Right now he see he needs help and expects me to deny all aspects of my own life, personality etc and be of service to him. Because of the dementia he makes mistakes and drops important financial and business tasks that I must constantly monitor both my life and his decisions actions etc. I am at the end of my tether, both because I am treated as a useful object or tool, while being under constant legal & financial threat by his actions. If we could get the diagnosis I could remove all financial decision making from him and lower the stress of what I will discover he's done next.

I am getting help, I have a supportive GP, this disease is just so invisible especially against Asperger's that no sees the hell of lives that have no normal, no ground to stand on that cannot shift and tilt at any moment, and a husband who is more than willing to throw me under the bus to protect his own image of himself as okay.

Exactly my situation re Asperger's - we are 18 months from a sudden decline due to him almost dying in hospital. I asked on here and got a very positive answer - and that is that the traits of people with Asperger's become very much exaggerated when they develop dementia - as if we did not have enough to cope with!

 

[barefoot princess]

The attached photos are of my 67 year old hubby's scan in Jan, compared to one from a Neurology department at a prominent hospital .... He is very symptomatic of Dementia as has been slowly declining over the past 2 years however the report from the MRI was ‘all clear’ ??? ....... Within our business environment he is making more and more mistakes and forgetting many things. He is losing credibility within our Management team due to this. He used to be as ‘sharp as a tack’ but now it’s said that nearly everything he touches has more holes in it than a crumpet ..... Our home life is not great with his mood changes and I can see paranoia coming into it a lot these days as “no-one tells him anything”..... He is in complete denial that there is anything wrong with memory and in fact tells me quite often how sharp his memory is and actually getting better ..... My GP is very supportive however without any diagnosis there is not much he can do, also my hubby won’t get any further tests as everything has come back ‘perfect’....... I am 54 and after burying my sister 12 months ago after a horrid battle with cancer, I’m not sure a can cope with this battle

One thing that I’m interested if anyone has experienced is my hubby has always had a healthy ego however the past 12 months has got so huge it’s bordering on being very unattractive.

 

[canary]

@barefoot princess The things that you describe sound very much like frontal lobe problems - the constant mistakes and the huge ego especially. Early stages of dementia often do not show on MRI scans. My MIL was clearly showing signs of dementia when she had an MRI that came back "all clear", but a further one a year later showed atrophy. Often Frontotemporal dementia doesnt show on an MRI, but does show on a SPEC scan and my OH had neuropsychology tests which showed clear decline even when other test were perfectly normal.

It is unfortunate, but by no means unusual, for your husband to decide that he is perfectly normal and therefore wont go for further tests . I can only say that with dementia, it cant be hidden indefinitely!

 

[barefoot princess]

@canary thank you for your reply ... I'll do some more research on the frontal lobe dementia

 

[Cazzita]

Good luck Barefoot Princess x

 

[barefoot princess]

Good luck Barefoot Princess x

thank you x