![]() ![]() Some days, I’m just sailing through a lot of stuff. Jim Butler : I don’t ever have the thought that, “Hey, I don’t feel like I have it.” But some days are easier and more fluid and they work better than other days. They showed the tau and amyloid that are markers of Alzheimer’s.īeing Patient: Patients describe that there are these periods of lucidity that appear, days when there seems to be nothing wrong while there are other days when they seem to be slipping down that slope. I ended up getting an MRI and eventually a lumbar puncture. It started out with cognitive testing and memory testing. You get to flunk your way into the next test. Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago is quite the big player in the Midwest here. You start off with the cognitive testing. Jim Butler : It was probably a three month process until we got the diagnosis. When I was doing it, I’d always think: “My dear, I have Alzheimer’s.” That was kind of in the background for me for that year or year and a half before I reached out and engaged with it that I was thinking, “Am I going where my dad went?”īeing Patient: What was it like getting an Alzheimer’s diagnosis for you-was it a lengthy process? I didn’t pick that up from anybody that they were noticing my forgetfulness and I certainly wasn’t sharing it with anybody. You need to address it.”īeing Patient: At that point when you were noticing something was wrong, were other people like your wife or people you’re close to picking up signs or did you disguise it well? You’ve been thinking about this for a year and you need to look at it. And I was thinking to myself: “There’s something going on. I was leaving the Apple store and I was going to our second home in Michigan. That was the thing that resonated with me strongly. High Technology, but they gave me a new phone. My phone conked out and I went in there and I had never been Mr. I had an issue at the Apple store in Chicago. But I’m a guy so I would just get angry and blow it off. I would be having trouble doing something that I was trying to accomplish. Jim Butler : My father would say: My clutch was slipping in an old stick shift car. And if I’m gentle with myself, I’m gentle with most everything in my life-probably more so than before I got this Alzheimer’s diagnosis, so that’s an upside to having this condition.īeing Patient: When did you first notice that maybe something was wrong? How did it first manifest? That’s my way of being gentle with myself. ![]() If I’m at a store and interacting with someone that I’m not familiar with and they give me a bunch of instructions or messages, I’ll say, “I can’t absorb quite that fast.” I’ll ask them, “Slow down. When I have a hiccup, when I have something I can’t remember, I smile and say, “Just relax, Jim.” And it’ll come back. I’d get angry or frustrated about it.Īfter a while, I learnt from being around these folks that had covered that ground before me to be gentle with yourself and don’t get impatient, angry and frustrated. Every time I’d have a cognitive hiccup-and I do a couple of dozen times a day-I’d think I was getting worse. I was so worried when I got my diagnosis. When I got my diagnosis, I had the good fortune to be in groups of a lot of people that had been covering the same ground as I was then-covering for years before me and I had learnt a lot from them. It has to do with memory, confusion and stuff that I was able to do routinely for my whole life and now I have to search for it when I’m looking to pull that up from my brain. It’ll come back to you, Butler says.īeing Patien t: Tell us what you mean by “disarming” an Alzheimer’s diagnosis? Butler advises others to engage with their local churches, hospitals and Alzheimer’s organizations and support groups. Talk to your peers and friends about your thoughts.But he reminds himself of the people that he strives to live up to: loved ones like his wife and friends. There are days when Butler is angry, frustrated and heartbroken. Butler’s key advice to those newly diagnosed? Being Patient spoke with Jim Butler, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s four years ago, about his efforts to “disarm” his diagnosis by rewiring his internal dialogue.īeing Patient spoke with Jim Butler, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s four years ago, about his efforts to “disarm” his diagnosis by rewiring his internal dialogue-and aiming to reduce stress, depression and anxiety along the way. ![]()
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