Has it really been 9 years?

I've already been living this disease for 9 years!  It is just unbelievable to me.  Along the way I have experienced so many things in our relationship that I didn't understand at the time.  But now, viewed under the microscope of FrontoTemporal Dementia, I understand  better.  I don't think you can ever truly understand what this disease does to the you until you live it.  I've decided to write this blog for 2 reasons - both pretty selfish.   First, I don't really want to forget all that has happened and the road we have been traveling. I've found that the stress of care giving is turning my memory into a colander.  Second, I want to journal the road we are currently traveling.  I don't know if any one will ever want to read any of this - thus the selfish aspect of it.

There is so little known about FTD.  When we got the diagnosis, I immediately got on the computer trying to find out as much as I could.  At the time there just wasn't much available, but I found two sites that continue to be my life line - AFTD.com and the spouse support yahoo group.  Since there is so little actually documented about the progression of the disease, other people going through the same thing provides me with more answers than I can get anywhere else.  Even our doctor (who is excellent) won't hazard a guess about time lines of progression.

So here I am.  I've never journaled before, but I hope that I can spend a little time each day telling our story.

An introduction.  My husband (to be known from this point as dh, dear husband) and I have been married 37 years this July.  We blended together a family of 4 children - 2 from his first marriage and 2 sons from ours.  The kids all grew up together in our household.  We have been blessed with 7 grandchildren - 4 beautiful girls and 3 rambunctious boys.  My dh worked his way up the ranks over the years to become area manager for several glass plants and was well respected in the industry.  Very intelligent man.  Holds a degree in microbiology. No slouch there.  He has always been a very reserved, quiet, a perfectionist.  I'm not bragging - just want to share where we came from before this disease struck.

I stayed home and raised our children and loved it.   Dh job brought us to Michigan in 1996.  We have 2 children and their families still in Oklahoma, where we were raised.  One son and his family live here in Michigan and our youngest son and his wife live in Washington state.

We planned well for our retirement years and looked forward to them.  We were going to travel; visiting our family and enjoying our grandchildren.  In 2002 we had a house built that was to be our retirement home.  We loved it.  It looked like the Victorian we always wanted, but was new construction.  It was in a planned community with parks, walking paths, close neighbors, even a town center.  June 30, 2003, my dh retired after 29 years with the  company.  Life was good.

I hope I'm not just boring you to death.  Remember,  I'm writing this as much for myself as any thing else.  This is all background, but it leads up to the small, subtle, and some not so subtle things that happened to let me know that something was going very wrong.