Gabi’s Present Condition

What Gabriel has is a type of frontal temporal dementia (FTD), an incurable progressive dementia that ends in death. His type is called progressive primary aphasia semantic variant. He is entering the 6th of 7 stages (read more here about the stages of this disease) Over time, we have both had to gradually withdraw from all of our former activities, such as salsa dancing class, going out to meals with friends and playing music with the jarana group. Our world has become quite small.

He sleeps a lot. Thirteen hours at night and another 2 to 3 hours during the day. The doctors say that is partly because of the dementia itself, but perhaps an even more important part is a lack of stimulation. At this stage in his illness, I can’t give him the cognitive, occupational and physical stimulation that he needs. And he is declining more and more rapidly.

And his memory is beginning to deteriorate. He has forgotten how to shave and he’s forgotten his sons’ names. Yesterday we were talking with his son Rodrigo on a video call, and while we were on the call with him I said that Rodrigo is in Canada. He turned away from the phone and asked me, “Who is Rodrigo?”

Now is the time for a nursing home, while he can still interact somewhat, and his new caregivers can bond with him, because he is still able to express his appreciation, and he does so at every meal, saying things like “it’s delicious,” “thank you so much,” “wow,” and “you’re precious.”  He can also still play guitar and do word finder puzzles. He does those daily for over two hours.  And his “job” is to sweep and wash the floors, which he does every day, and leaves them impeccable.  He used to wash this dishes, but he’s becoming obsessive, which means taking an hour to wash just a handful of dishes. In an area with water scarcity, that doesn’t work anymore. His remaining conversation skill is to ask “how old are you,” and tell you that he is 70 years old. In fact he really seems to enjoy conversing. The other day when we went to the bank, he stayed seated in the waiting area with a lot of other people as I walked up to the window. Suddenly I heard a lot of talking. I turned around and there he was, pointing to one person at a time saying “how old are you,” “and how old are you.” Being with people seems to bring him to life. So living with others and the therapy that they will give him in the nursing home will help him to conserve these abilities a bit longer, and perhaps we will also discover that he has even more than we realized!