A doctor's column in the newspaper yesterday described dementia as a decline in cognitive functioning, with memory loss as a prominent symptom. Memory loss is not the primary symptom of dementia with Lewy Bodies. Dwane can still retrieve any date of most any event. He is a more accurate reporter of dates and facts from the daily newspaper than I am. What he does have difficulty with is multiple-step tasks and processing and expressing verbally. He has trouble navigating the remote control to the tv, dvr and satellite dish. He has difficulty reliably accessing our phone voice mail. He used to be very good at fixing things, but was unable to fix our snow blower all winter --- and then, behold, one day this summer, he fixed it. Visual hallucinations and the sleep disorder where one acts out one's dreams are unique symptoms of this dementia, along with the cognitive decline and Parkinsonian symptoms of muscle rigidity, balance difficulties, slowness in walking. I will describe in future entries the systems I have put in place to help prevent these difficulties. These skills are ones I learned in teaching special education: behavior modification plans. I am a firm believer of prevention being the best approach to any behavioral difficulty, with setting the environment up for success as the most optimal approach.

The most difficult aspect for me in living this this dementia is the extreme variability in his alertness, his lucidity and his comprehension. The other most difficult aspect for me is his unawareness of his own decline, which is apparently an aspect of frontal lobe dementia.