My Story

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Written by rpparker1

Hi Everyone, just reposting what I have put in on my profile,
I have been a full time carer since 2007. Since my husband had complications to the cancer operation which caused severe nerve damage to his neck and the cancer treatment he had been receiving. Before that I had just completed two law degrees and was in my second month of practical legal training. I have 4 children (2 still at home), and 3 grandchildren. My two youngest children are 13 years old. Last year I started to notice things were not right with my husband Ray. Earlier in that year he had a severe blood infection which nearly killed. His memory became severely impaired while at hospital and I mention to the doctors that I had noticed that he had problems with his memory before getting sick. They did an MRI which showed up nothing, they also did a small cognitive test that he didn't do to bad on. The severity of his memory problem improved after a while. Following up with our local doctor, we were told that the memory issue was probably caused by the by the fact that my husband had been very sick, and that he was on a massive doses of painkillers. All this time my husband was saying he had no such problem with his memory. I left it go at that. However as the year was coming to an end my husband's symptoms were getting worse, He was having difficulty making decisions, has problems with remembering dates and time, money matters were becoming an issue, and performing certain simple tasks like using the TV remote, or confusing the telephone for the TV remote. Bad habits which he had previously dealt with, such as excessive drinking were back. He even asks me sometimes whether he still smokes. This habit was given up nine years ago. He also becomes violent at times. His doctor now acknowledges that Ray has a demetia problem and has referred Ray to get assessed by a private specialist. Ray had reluctanly agreed to go. This doesn't happen till middle of February. So at the moment we have good days, bad days, and horrible days. As one of my friends reminds me, Ray is not deliberately trying to hurt us, by what he says and does, it's the disease. However, some days it's very hard to remember that. I hope to be chatting with you all.
Patricia