March 1, 2020

I just finished a book by the cousin of a friend of mine. It's call "Stop and Smell the Garbage" by Christine McMahon Sutton. The author wrote about her experience as a caregiver to her husband who had early onset Alzheimer's. He only lived 4 years with the disease, but many of their experiences are similar to ours. I highly recommend the book to other caregivers. She writes about the struggles, regrets, lessons learned, and missed signs during the time before diagnosis.

I also recommend "The Forgetting" by David Shenk. Although the book is a little old now, it's a great explanation of the disease, it's history, and it's future. I especially resonated with the section that compares age milestones of children with the reversing milestones of Alzheimer's sufferers. When I compared what John does now with childhood milestones, it seems his symptoms are similar to a 4 or 5 year old. That was particularly horrifying to understand.

Another great book is "On Pluto" by Greg O'Brien. He is a journalist who has Alzheimer's and he explains what it is like to live with the disease.

There are lots of other good books, but these are ones that I found most helpful. I think knowledge is power, so the more I can learn, the better prepared I'll be for whatever comes next.

John keeps popping in the room telling me that he needs to make some calls tomorrow to get to the bottom of this. I'm not sure what he's talking about, so I ask, then get a lecture about how we're not on the same page and it takes too much time to explain it to me. He also touched some button on the electricity meter on our breaker box. He's sure he messed up something important. But it looks fine to me.

He's cranky today. He seems annoyed that there isn't something we need to do right now. I think he's happier when we're busy running from one thing to another. And that's what we do most of the time. But today is on the quiet side and that makes him stir crazy. So he's busy unloading a closet and his taking books off his bookshelf. He's concerned that things are missing.

We visited my mom earlier today, right after her lunch. I showed up with a bunch of snacks and she happily ate them all, and asked for more. She also asked me to take her back to her room. But we were in her room, and she was in bed, which is her favorite place.