Voices of Alzheimer's Caregivers: Part Two

June 25, 2009— -- This is part two of the transcript from a special roundtable discussion featuring Alzheimer's caregivers. In this section, the participants -- Alice, Maureen, Phyllis and Joe -- talk about the early warning signs of Alzheimer's disease.

JOE: My recollection of the first time that I sensed something with my wife was when we were selling our home of 50 years and moving in with our daughter. She was reacting strange and I thought it was because of the move. But, later on, I thought that she was unable to remember things -- even our home of 50 years she couldn't recall. She went into various moods.

ALICE: Well, with my husband, I first noticed it when he was driving. He did most of the driving. He knew all the roads and exits to get to different places. And, all at once, he couldn't remember how to get to the main road to the mall, and then he couldn't remember how to get to his brother's house. I'm thinking: What's wrong here? He couldn't remember his son's name, who lived next door, and he couldn't remember his daughter's name. And I'm thinking: This is not good because he had a memory that was unbelievable. It was all kind of gradual over maybe a year, a year-and-a-half. And, then, when he couldn't remember his home address, that's when we decided to go see what was happening. He was already -- I don't know what stage -- he was already on the downside

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PHYLLIS: We had run into the same thing, someone who knew all of the roads, very familiar with the roads to get everywhere and couldn't remember where they were going. And the biggest thing that was our indicator is that this person was very meticulous about taking care of their bills and keeping a checkbook and a checkbook register. The day the bill came in the mail, the check was already written. The checkbook register got thrown out, couldn't keep it anymore, couldn't write checks properly.