Big fish

I own only 3 or 4 movie DVDs.

One of them is the movie "Big Fish".

there is so much in that movie that reminds me of our  story.

You, my father, are the storyteller as seen in the movie Big Fish.  Your stories, perhaps, weren't quite as fantastical, nor the characters, quite as colorful, but there was still a similarity. This was present as long as I knew you.

And my reaction was always to partly believe, and to partly not believe it all.
It was never so obviously not true that I knew I couldn't trust you.

***********************************************

Well, that isn't completely true.  I did figure out, in 1993, that you were not a good source for financial advice.  I stopped asking for your financial advice after I quickly lost $13,000.

Also, today I am reminded of the day you took me and my husband to the safe, and told us the secret combination, and that there was so much money in there I would never have to work.  I believed you.  You were my dad. I still went on to get an education and work.  But what if I had relied on that information?  Was it a delusion or a lie then? Or did you lose it all to scams?

********************************************

The poignancy of the Big Fish  movie, for me, was the funeral, when all the fantastical bigger than life characters turned out to be real.
It wasn't all a fantasy, or a lie.

**********************************

We have pictures of those colorful characters from my early life.  It was true then, too.

Is this what made it seem feasible to you, that the scam scenarios in 2009 and 2010 were true?

****************************************

Was the dementia present already in 1993 when you gave me bad financial advice? or a few years earlier when you took me to the safe?

Were you a normal person who went on to insidiously develop fronto temporal dementia?

Or, did you actually have manic depression, or some other untreated psychiatric condition, earlier in life, which made it all the harder for us to notice or to deal with  the transition?

************************

FTD and PPA-- it ain't AD

I have a phone conversation, or maybe it was an email, with an old college friend. We haven't had close contact over the years, but the mutual trust and friendship have never wavered.

By coincidence, and my great fortune, she is a dementia related health advocate expert, based in another state.

I tell her about what has been going on with my dad, and she says, "Does he have FTD or PPA?"

I have never heard of FTD or PPA! 

I google it - 

FrontoTemporal Dementia 

Primary Progressive Aphasia

I read the descriptions, and I am sure FTD is what he has.  

Its not Alzheimer's disease (AD), which has a different set of presenting manifestations and a speedier decline. It might be misdiagnosed as psychiatric disease.  

The course of this disease has been so insidious and so slow, we didn't see it coming, and yet we were suffering with the consequences of it for at least 9 years prior to the sentinel event of 12/23/09.

http://www.brain.northwestern.edu/pdfs/ftdppaconference/ApproachesToBehaviors.pdf

http://www.brain.northwestern.edu/pdfs/ftdppaconference/ExpandingCareTeamMidLate.pdf

http://www.brain.northwestern.edu/pdfs/ftdppaconference/CopingRelationshipBehaviorChanges.pdf