LEWY BODY DAILY JOURNAL

This is the story of Pam and John; she in her early 50’s and John is 62. Pam is a college professor. John taught at a local community college until diagnosed with Parkinson’s in March 2008, then Lewy Body Dementia in April.

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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

fairly stable

We are now pretty well settled in the renovated house. We have a woman who comes twice a week and cleans, does John's laundry, and straightens up his area. He doesn't like it when she tries to organize his things but he doesn't get around to doing it himself. I tried to suggest that when he can't do things himself he needs to accept someone else doing it not exactly his way, but he doesn't buy that.

He will let her help him with some things like putting on his socks. I tried to push him that he needs to shower more than once a week but his answer was that putting on his socks was too difficult. Sigh.

Today he went out for a walk for the first time in months and called me to come get him because he had been too ambitious (he went nearly two miles). It would be good new if he would get back to exercising. He has a physical therapist he likes and now goes there twice a week. Maybe she has finally found the trick to get him to make the effort to exercise.

He did a driving evaluation with an occupational therapist at the rehab hospital and he passed. It worries me that he came home exhausted by the effort because he had to change his usual habits for the evaluation (for example staying under the speed limit). But so long as he has no hallucinations and does this three hour driving evaluation once a year I won't fight it. Despite how slow he has become his reaction time tested as good.