Alzheimers - early warning signs

[Hopefullyrecovering]

DH is 55. His mother and all his maternal relatives suffered from dementia. These things run in families, I know, and for years I've worried that DH would start suffering from it. I am probably being over-anxious, but I'd like to make sure that he gets help if I do see any early warning signs, because help is available in the earlier stages. So, these are the symptoms. Tell me whether I should get DH to the doctor's (he will be totally resistant) or not.

• Cannot leave the house without forgetting something. Anything. Usually his wallet, sometimes his keys, sometimes his coat. Any trip out involves a u-turn a couple of miles away from home when he works out what it is that he has forgotten.

• Has difficulty coping with multi-tasking. He is an intelligent and organised chap. But give him two or three things to do, and he flounders. He cannot, for example, walk and talk. This sounds ridiculous, but if I ask him a question when he is walking, he stops dead while he tries to process the question and develop an appropriate response.

• Last Sunday (and this is what has prompted this thread) he woke me up at 9am literally shouting. I should explain that I had had a disturbed night and only got to bed at 6am so I was naturally a bit miffed. But he was shouting "Why haven't you sorted DD out?". I was a bit baffled as to why DD needed sorting out and asked him to calm down and asked him why he thought DD needed something. He said "What about school -you've forgotten about school!!" I calmly explained it was Sunday, and there was no need to worry. But it's made me worry. How many of us wake up thinking 'oh, shit' for whatever reason. That's natural. But brooding on it and still not coming up with the answer is worrying, no?

It is worrying, OP.

Having looked at everyone's posts and the links, I seem to have most of the early symptoms. There is something wrong with me - CFS - and I notice my impairments. As far as I'm aware, a characteristic of brain disease is that the sufferer doesn't recognise how they've changed and gets quite angry when it's pointed out :(

I realise most MNers are comparatively young, but 55 is NOT old! There shouldn't be any 'age-related' issues by 55, except physical performance things like your half-marathon time!

I'm very sorry to hear you may be facing dementia in your marriage, my love. If he really won't admit to any impairments, could you get some 'evidence' together for him to review when he's having a good day? It'll be better for you both if he goes to his doctor sooner rather than later.

Ask DH

Time of day
Date
Day of week
Year
Where is he now ( so not home somewhere different)
What floor he is on?
Who is PM
Name 3 objects you show him
Count from 100 back in series of 3s ( I can't remember if it is 3 pr 7)
Ask DH to name the 3 objects you asked earlier
What he had for breakfast
What he had for tea last night
Something that happened in soap/ news this last week

See how many he gets right? This is part of what we call mini mental tests. Best if you can get someone else to do test! Not at home. Score below 9 I'd look into doc...but that is still not bad 8... But if you think it is then early intervention is fab US have loads more treatments than UK too which showing to be great ontop of the meds for stabalising etc

Paranoia and going back in time is common symptoms...so DH would say 'wake dd up for school and dd is know 25 yrs old. Or DH would turn up for work at another place he worked etc

It is no harm seeing GP anyway as if stress then this is bad for health too...I know! Hence I have a lot of your DH symptoms but score well on this test.

I think you should go to the GP without him and discuss your concerns, emphasising his family history. Try to get a referral to a specialist clinic, not local old-age services or dementia service as they are usually not good at diagnosing or managing early-onset.
Good luck and look after yourself too.

It could just be stress but I would go to the GP and try to get a referral anyway. Even if a specialist decides that he is not currently bad enough to give a diagnosis of dementia, they will be able to do memory tests and establish a baseline for assessing whether his memory gets worse in the future.

Plus if these are early signs of it, it might be possible to prescribe something like Aricept, which is more effective when taken early.

It is always better to get professionals involved as early as possible - my GM left it far too late with my GF. She was very shocked at one of his first assessments to find that he didn't know whether he had any children, let alone their names - he'd been able to mask how bad it was by nodding and smiling at things without really understanding.