Robert Friday and William Bergquist
Following are two sets of documents regarding the experiences of dementia. One of these sets of documents comes from the perspective of the person with dementia. The other set of documents comes from the perspective of a person relating to the person with dementia.
Debbie [Robert Friday]
DEBBIE’S JOURNEY:
It was just a short 4 or 5 years ago that some anomalies in Debbie’s cognition became apparent: losing a word here or there, not able to properly use apps on an iPhone, repeating herself with questions and comments. In 2022 after an all-afternoon battery of cognition exams with the UCLA Psychology Department, the assessment was presented as Moderate Cognitive Impairment. The following January of 2023 a PET scan at the American Hospital of Paris revealed brain degradation consistent with Alzheimer’s disease. Her cognitive abilities were diminishing at a rather rapid rate over the next year until, in December of 2024, she fell off the cognitive cliff in just one evening.
Her question to her husband as to how long he had been coming to Paris demonstrated that she no longer could consistently recognize him nor understand time, location, people or recall events. The next year of 2025 she continued a precipitous decline that impacted her motor skills as well as memory/processing. In January of 2026 it was determined that she required full-time round-the-clock care and she was transitioned to a Memory Care Residence in the Montparnasse neighborhood of Paris where she currently resides.
She no longer can walk and talking is limited to a few confused words. And her eating/swallowing functions now are affected. But we all manage to raise a smile on her face every once in a while . . .
