One of the most difficult and devastating conditions we could end up with is Alzheimer’s disease. Even if we don’t face it personally and it happens to a loved one, it can be life-altering.
Most people think about Alzheimer’s disease as being a condition that happens when we are advanced in years. There’s a 41-year-old father, however, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, and he has had it for quite some time.
The man who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Frazier, opened up about the situation publicly. He spoke about it on his YouTube channel.
He said: “So I got diagnosed eight months ago, and I think my symptoms probably started about two/two-and-a-half years before that.
“It’s funny because I don’t remember what my symptoms really were initially, all I remember was having some pretty big memory flaws, like I remember I was sitting down to watch a movie once and my partner’s gone, ‘yeah, we watched that like a month ago’.
“Anyway, I watched the whole movie, and the ending was still a complete surprise. I had no memory of watching it whatsoever, and I didn’t watch many movies either at the time. So it was, it was a bit concerning that was.
“It’s funny though because I don’t know if I’ve had symptoms like that again ever since – I’m not sure if that’s even my Alzheimer’s. I have no idea. It’s just something that, you know, it was like, ‘Oh, God, that’s a bit concerning’. I just remembered having sort of more, bigger memory issues like that as being the problem.
“At some point, though, I started having some issues with my cognition more generally, and I think that was more getting closer to the diagnosis, where I noticed that.
“It wasn’t until even probably just a few months before the diagnosis, I noticed that I was having issues with just thinking, being able to think deeply. I find that I have more sort of surface level thinking, more shallow thinking.”
He spoke about how he was struggling to remember what was taking place in other people’s lives, even after they told him. This included what his teenage daughters shared with him about their lives.
When his daughter shared that she was going to the movie theater and he forgot to pick her up, it became a serious concern.
He said: “I remember once, this is early on, I remember my daughter had told me numerous times throughout the day that she’d go to the movies that night and it would be sort of quite late with a friend, and it came to night time, and I started freaking out, thinking, ‘where’s my daughter?’, I was generally freaking out.
“I was driving to the nearby town trying to see from other friends, if they were with, if she was with, if they’ve heard from her. And and it got to a point where I was about to ring the police, like I was that concerned
“I’d been trying to call her, trying to phone message, trying to message her, and just not getting through to her at all. So yeah, really freaking out. And then she ends up calling me, saying, like, ‘Hey, Dad, I’ve just been in the movies. Remember, I told you?’.”
Fraser now has his teens text him if they go someplace, even if they’ve already talked about it. He can then check his messages and remember where they are.
