Who, you might ask, is Lewy?

The short and sweet answer is that Dr. Lewy and Dr. Alzheimer were working together when Dr. A found the tangles in the brain cells which are characteristic of the symptoms we know of as Alzeheimer's Disease. Dr. Lewy identified a second type of dementia, characterized by structures in the brain cells which are now known as Lewy Bodies. Dementia with Lewy Bodies is a lot like Alzheimers, but symptoms come and go, become more intense and less so, from day to day and sometimes from hour to hour. (Can I say minute to minute?) It is the third most common type of dementia.

Not sure where this adventure will take us, but my husband Ranney was diagnosed with DLB (shortcut) this past fall. To most of us it seemed a sudden thing, but looking back, we could identify occurrences that were definite signs that this was coming.

In this blog we will chronicle some of the heartbreaks and humor that come up when living with DLB. And yes, humor, we laugh, often.

Monday 20 March 2017

I am back to tell some of the stories.

Ranney passed away last June 16, 2016 at approximately 6:15 a.m. The nursing home had given us a room to ourselves. Rachel came the previous day from Boise. Friends came and sat with me until she got there. She had been there with the family the weekend before, and Karen and the whole crew a week or so before that. Chris had come the previous day, and Monsignor Ecker came and anointed him. We knew it was coming.

It was my birthday.

Rachel and I had been keeping vigil. Taking turns resting on the other bed in the room. She woke me early and told me she thought the end was coming. I held his hand. Suddenly, he opened his eyes, looked at me, then squeezed my hand, and he was gone.

In the wake of Robin Williams wife talking about his Lewy Bodies, friends have asked about the symptoms. I have decided to rewaken this blog and tell the stories. Some of them are terribly sad, some are scary, and some are downright funny.

They might give some wake up calls to some of the readers--to see things earlier than I did.
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