Rob's Dementia Journey with FTD

  Dealing with the guilt, even though I know I did the right thing. On Friday, I sent an email to the memory clinic and reported Rob's driving incident. Today our family doctor called and said the memory clinic sent my email on to him, and the clinic wants to do more testing right away. That's a good thing. But then he asked if Rob knew I had sent the email. Had I discussed the incident with him? (I tried but got nowhere). How was he going to react? (He has been getting violent when he gets frustrated lately) They are likely going to take away Rob's driver's license, which means he may lose his job - and it feels like it's all my fault. I had been up all night long terribly sick when the doctor called and wasn't so coherent myself. But you have to perk up, make sense, remember details, and make arrangements, no matter how you feel. I feel like I am sneaking around behind Rob's back, and I want to go hide in a hole and not deal with any of this. — feeling ov

  Two things are heavy on my mind today. First, Rob is still early stages, and has always been a careful, cautious driver. Today he raced the flashing lights at an oncoming train crossing. We did make it to the other side, but with barely moments to spare before the train passed. He didn't even look, or slow down - as if he didn't notice the flashing lights. When asked about it, he said that the lights often stayed on for 20 minutes after the train passes, another time he said that the lights were broken and came on even when a train was not coming. I checked with a friend who also drive that way to work, and he confirmed that this was not true. Either way, if he had looked, he would have seen the train coming. He later said it was no big deal, and that the lights didn't start flashing until after he crossed. Second, he got a prostate cancer diagnosis today (this happened after the train incident, so wasn't the cause). He is taking it well, they caught it early. But the

I've been wanting a new fence in our backyard for years, and this year we finally decided to go ahead. As we work together on this, I think to myself, this might be our last good summer together. He seemed to come back a bit, at least for a while. I keep thinking, this will be a good memory of time spent together, and a visual reminder for me of better days. Yes, some days it was a challenge to keep him on task, to get him to understand what I wanted him to do. Other times he would just take over and do a great job. I did all the planning, working out the details of what we needed, and purchasing. I measured everything and showed him what I needed him to do. It took us over a month to build a 100-foot fence and two gates. We only have one section left to do, just waiting for a tree to be removed by professionals. But yesterday, I seem to lose him again. He kept asking over and over how we were going to keep the dogs from getting out, no matter how many times I explained about the