‘Caring for someone you love who is living with dementia is unpredictable, relentless, hard, and, at times, terrifying’
When Luisa Paolone married her childhood sweetheart, Steven, 47 years ago, she couldn’t have imagined that the reserved, selfless, kind and quiet man she knew would become egocentric and loquacious.
“It was a difficult journey,” says the Spokane, Washington, resident. “I saw the decline a few years before diagnosis, like not knowing what a poinsettia was, or the names of bridges and mountains he had climbed as a youth — insisting they were called something other than their true names.”
Read more: NextAvenue: 9 Ways to Cope With Dementia-Related Personality Changes