Tony’s wrote;

…….I always thought that A/D was something that happened to all old people, we all went a bit silly in our senior years, I had no idea how wrong that perception of mine was, and in early 1990, a life changing, head on car accident changed my world and my life completely…..I suffered severe head and brain damage and had to learn to walk, talk , drive and work again…..and I did, though it was 3 years later before I began to have memory recall of the crash…..I realized I had been lucky not to have been killed….

…..I knew that the injuries were very bad, and I would pay the price, in ten or fifteen years time, but I was NOT prepared for the final diagnosis seventeen years later….

….As I struggled along through those years, up until 2003, I just assumed it was my accident injuries playing up a little,………I would lose my car in the car park,….I would forget people’s names……I would forget what I was talking about…..I would forget what I went shopping for……..when my wife died from a brain tumour in 2000,  I reckoned I was just sad and stressed, I had nursed her at home until 3 days before she died, so I knew what was wrong with me.!!!….

…..Then I started to be aggressive, nasty thoughts, and realized, this is not me, what is wrong.?…and then I became lost in a one way street, in a one street town, in country NSW for 2 hrs, I did not know where I was, what I was doing there, where I had come from, or which way I was going….but I wasn’t frightened, I felt very distant and vague, ……I asked at a house but was told to clear off before the police were called, so I must have looked strange and talked rubbish….I laughed about it then and that is how I still cope today..

…..the doctors I talked to said there was nothing wrong, no tests, no specialists nothing, so I kept going, after all I was not a doctor….2003 till 2007 inclusive, were extremely hard for me but, again I felt it was from the accident years earlier, so when I changed my living area from Dubbo and moved to Bribie Island, I needed a new doctor and found one at Woorim, a Dr Frances Robinson….and on my first visit to introduce myself and get a prescription, the Doctor said after a while “have you thought of giving up work ?” to which I answered “no, why?”….to which the Doctor replied ” there is something very wrong with you, I have been listening to you and watching you, and I am very concerned that you are ill , I want to see you when you return “…..

…..So, 7 weeks later I came back home, went to the Doctor and said that I had trouble doing my job and coming back took me a week to get home……the doctor was not surprised at all, and immediately ordered tests, so after brain scans and a neurologist [twice], I went for my results…..which were Early Onset Dementia, most likely Alzheimers……..I knew I was crook, but not A/D, I was blown away, lost for words,

…stop work immediately, get your affairs in order, 2 to 5 years at most, probably not that much…

…I did not think long about it though, because I had been losing the ability to think properly for some time..

I found stopping work was hard as after 43 years, but within 3 months, I had forgotten that I had even worked or what  had  been doing all that time, I didn’t care about anything anymore……my descent into AD was rapid and I was losing weight…..I had trouble remembering to eat, wash, trouble dressing, I felt as though I was lost, couldn’t understand television, and when I had flashes of normality, I was frightened. terrified and not nice to know…..

….I had lost control of my brain……the storage was not a problem, it was the retrieval mechanism that was failing me….on five occasions I felt that I would not wake up I was so weak,…. in mid 2010, I asked my Doctor for Adrenalin, because I thought it might help, I explained why, the Doctor said no, I said just look at me, what have I got to lose?….with that the Doctor prescribed me Cymbalta 30 mg but with a warning that this drug had a bad reputation for suicide and if I had any problems to stop immediately……

..that night I took one and two hours later I was as normal as…….the next day I went into the Doctor laughing and saying “look at me”….the Doctor called it a miracle and still does….I put my story on the internet….please visit at your leisure at…… http://www.adbi.com.au ….., edited my own book that I had written a long time ago, designed the cover and the print size and am doing my own tests and research on this drug…..I would have died before the end of 2010, now 38 months later, I am still alive, still looking after myself and writing this story….

……currently the best way to describe me is, fairly normal but fragile, like a dog that has had distemper, been treated and survived…..as I write I am raising my dosage to 90 mg, it is not a cure, it halts the progression of the disease…currently my brain is either a bit slow or as sharp as..what I have found, I don’t know, but it is keeping me alive….and living without any help or care and I look and feel normal again…

Regards, Tony H.

Note: Copyright © Tony; published with permission.