Adventures with Lewy: 2016

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.

Wednesday, 17 February 2016

Sunday, 14 February 2016

Money

For a while he had an obsession with coins. He had had a bunch of coins for a long time and then started counting them over and over and finally putting them into coin rolls. He cashed those in and is less concerned with them as he was

Instead it is a great sum of money that he "has" but the bank personnel are not allowed to tell me about it. He says I should use it to pay off ALL the bills, even the mortgage. I don't suppose it occurs to him that if I can't know about it I can't very well use it to pay those bills.

We had to be into the bank for some business the other day and when we were finished he got a withdrawal slip to take some money out of his small savings account. He made it out for $4000. The account was currently at $160 so he only took out $150 which he then gave to me. He was content with that. But still insists that he has $200,000 in some secret account. (Sometimes it is $6000 and other times it is $180,000 or at least will be in December.)

I am still not sure if that poor teller thought he was trying to rob the bank of $4000.

Thursday, 11 February 2016

Three parts

There are three main sets of symptoms of Dementia with Lewy Bodies.

Memory problems

Parkinsonlike symptoms

Hallucinations--acting out dreams

We have seen all at one time or another.