It is a year since I joined TP and a year since we went for lunch with friends and I realised that he was not himself at all. Life had already got worse and had been difficult for at least a year which was why I had started to make adjustments. I had already started making decisions about what we could and couldn’t manage. We went for a walk and lunch with the same friends yesterday, exactly a year on, and I decided to look back at my story. I was shocked how bad things were for me and the difficulties I was having and all the suggestions made by the people on TP, which I thought were impossible, have come to pass and I am much better. He on the other hand is much much worse. When friends and family ask me how he is now, I say he is well but worse. Then I say and I am well but better. I live virtually alone, no one to chat with about this and that, can’t go out and leave him alone except for short periods, don’t actually want to do things with him any more and only do it to give him stimulation. I am posting this to say that for me life after a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is one hundred percent better with the forums than it would otherwise have been. I dread to think how bad I would have been and would have been no use to him at all. I still get exasperated by and uncomprehending of this ghastly illness and feel that I cannot go on but the days roll around.