Doctors
Singerwood, ShelleyLee77 and John 51 -- I took my other half for a visit with a young doctor a year and a half ago, and early/slow onset is so difficult to see unfolding before your eyes! Here in Canada getting to see a doctor takes months, if you don't have an assigned one already. We have moved, and the process must start all over again.
Singerwood, I had the same problem. The doctor seemed amused. Now my husband at the time was 63. The doctor quickly found some kind of perfunctory oral Alzheimer's test on line, with 10 questions, and as my husband had no difficulty with that, he said to me, smiling: "He doesn't have any problem. Come back in ten years."
I was in shock. After my husband was in the hallway, I went back in with an explanation sheet I quickly wrote out, and handed it to the doctor saying this is a very serious problem. No interest. A professional stare.
My OH has also taken herbs for years, and now coconut oil. Things with his memory are getting worse, but it is slow.
I have had a couple of health concerns myself. We relocated to New Brunswick, Canada. I cannot get a doctor assigned to us yet. I have had my own health issues, which are being neglected. This is the story I hear also from friends in other parts of Canada. I constantly need to go to the bathroom, and have several accidents a day, because my bladder is being pressed by a uterus full of fibroids, one large one calcified. This has finally been diagnosed, but I got the CAT-scan proof myself from a hospital's medical records, because I never heard back, after two months, from the clinician (walk-in clinic) with the results.
Another doctor told me I may need a puffer because my lungs are bad - from pollution, I suppose, as I have never smoked, but my lungs look like I smoke three packs a day, per another doctor at Emergency, where I went when I had trouble breathing. That was four months ago, and the specialist to whom I was referred in "the big city" has never contacted me, as there is a waiting list.
Naturally, going in for an operation is out-of-the-question, as my OH cannot be trusted to take care of the dogs or himself for longer than a day or two.
I realize this Forum is a wonderful, wonderful place. We are not alone, though many of us are like airliners, flying around and around close to an airport where we cannot safely land, running out of gas.