I’m becoming convinced that my current boss is suffering from early onset Alzheimers or some other form of age related dementia. She’s only in her mid 60s, but she’s getting incredibly forgetful, has sharp and bizarre mood swings, and will be a total biatch one minute and simply marvelous the next- sometimes in the same conversation. Were it just me I’d think “well, perhaps she has issues with my job performance”, but it’s everybody who works for her and several people who don’t; unfortunately I’m not really close enough to or comfortable enough with her to suggest she “might wanna get that looked at”, but something’s definitely not right as she’s gone from a capable but mellow person to a she-Caligula in the past year or so.
It WAS a lot, olives. Takes a lot of hugs to get through it all. 
Now it’s time to find out what kind of life-changes I’ll experience. . .
My father . . . who had always been a very intelligent, extremely creative man . . . developed Alzheimer’s. He always had his dark side, and that’s the side that took over. He became very abusive and violent, and my mother took care of him single-handedly as long as she could. He finally died, but it really took a toll on her.
My father used to be a laughing, fun-loving, beer drinking kind-of-guy.
Twenty years ago he “found God.” He belongs to a Christian/cult church. He no longer laughs or has fun. Everything is “God-this” and “Jesus-that”. Is serious and gloomy all the time.
From my perspective, my father died 20 years ago.
My wife. Currently. 46. Oye.
My dad sustained extensive brain damage when I was 15. It took him about 4 years to get back to basic functioning (talking, making sense, walking, using both hands, able to pay attention enough to have a conversation, any short term memory to speak of). He’s not a completely different person (which does happen) but he’s very different.
It sucks. Anything else you want to know, ask.
Yes, I have. I haven’t seen him in several years. Tomorrow, I’m driving across the state to attend his funeral. Suicide. 32 years old. I knew this kid for more than 20 years. Watched him grow up. Now, I’ll watch them scatter his ashes.
Bright kid. Athletic. Did well in college. Unfortunately, that was the last place he did well. Became increasingly withdrawn, remote, quick to anger. No drugs or alcohol were involved. This kid was straight edge. Had some sort of breakdown while attempting law school. Couldn’t hold a job. Lived off his relatives. Got into the whole emo thing. Listened to/wrote sad music. Took a turn for the worse earlier this year. Got committed to a mental institution. Was released last week. Committed suicide early Monday morning. Shattered several lives in an instant. His mother, grandmother, uncle-who-was-a-father-figure–all utterly devastated. Friends left wondering why. And what if I/we had just…
Yeah. What if. May have made no difference. We’ll never know.
A number of years ago, there were about 5-6 of us who worked together and also socialized together. I was very close with one woman who I also worked most closely with. She was extremely intelligent (had an MA in some type of biochemistry) and a lot of fun to be with. She was also a heavy drinker. One morning she was in a serious accident on her way to work. She spent several weeks in the hospital, then moved back with her parents for further recovery. It became clear to everyone that she was becoming out of touch with reality, and also drinking a lot, and also putting on a lot of weight. She became very paranoid and was hearing voices. After a while she tried to return to work, but she just couldn’t do the work anymore. She became more and more withdrawn, and eventually took her own life.
My cousin, whom I’ll call Ron because he used to be pretty close to being one, had a lousy childhood and then some. When he was 11, his mother left him and his elder sister in the tender care of our Grandparents from Hell to go live with her new boyfriend, who had made it clear that he was interested in her but not in anybody of hers (he doesn’t even allow her nephews to call him Uncle - he’s as much my uncle as the first husband, both being by marriage); a few years later Ron moved in with them. He had dropped out of high school, was unable to get a job, would do stunts like refuse to fill in a form with his name and contact info to apply for a job saying “I don’t write”.
Ron and his girlfriend were caught dealing pills when he was in his mid-20s (he says he never used and I believe him); the sentences would have gotten suspended automatically, but Ron’s lawyer thought he needed a good shock, so he got the judge to use a system where my cousin slept at his mother’s, got picked up by a prisoner transport van, taken to jail for the day, then returned at night. It worked.
The girlfriend, whose sentence had been suspended, refused to accept that Ron did not want to hang out with the previous crowd or deal any more. They broke up. He got his first job as a bricklayer, moved on, moved on… he’s now shift manager in a service station, which may not sound like much but he’s been employed continuously since that first bricklaying job, his flat is almost paid off and while he’ll never be the brightest bulb on the tree, he’s now… well, normal.
My father has Parkinson’s disease. His symptoms first showed up when my mom was pregnant with me, so my family has been dealing with this for almost 30 years. In the last 2? 3? years, he’s gone from funny, smart, sweet, a poet and an engineer, a father and a friend, to … nothing. We don’t/can’t know if he’s still there, just unable to express himself, or just gone, and I honestly don’t know what’s worse. My mother had been taking care of him, but in April she was diagnosed with lung cancer, so we had to put Papa in a dementia ward. The guilt, the anger … it’s unimaginable.
This is amazingly hard to talk about, but LurkMeister’s post hit a chord with me. And I wanted to say something.
Ok, this thread is heartbreaking.
I was extremely close to my younger sister when we were growing up and in our early adulthood when we were both drinkers. Then I sobered up, and she became a bulimic alcoholic. If I hadn’t dumped her, I don’t think I would have survived.
Can I unbreak your heart a little?
Two stories. One is about a woman I know who used to be a self-loathing, alcoholic, compulsively-promiscuous lesbian who is now a remarkably stable and well-adjusted adjunct professor of psychology.
The other is me. I used to be a total shit to every woman I got involved with; I no longer am. My little sister once told me she was astounded at the difference in 40-year-old me versus the 25-year-old version.
My older brother (#3 of 3; I’m kid #4). Had a pretty serious head injury at age 9 (fell 2 stories and landed on his head… was goofing off in an under-construction house down the street from us). He was in a coma for a few days and spent a few weeks in the hospital. The miracle was, he had no physical deficits. It definitely made him less of a fun sib though - we’re only 19 months apart in age and played together a fair bit before that but we argued nonstop after that. It also contributed to his being a poor student, we think - he was the kid who got into legal trouble, smoked pot, drank way too much, picked lousy friends (like the ones who left him in jail on weekend and went on to the beach without him, when he was arrested for drunk driving)… took 10+ years to graduate college because he’d periodically go off the deep end and trash his life…
He was well into his 30s before he really turned things around, and now he’s actually a pretty decent, responsible person.
Heart slightly unbroken. Good for you, changing like that.
I actually would probably qualify for this thread. I went through a period of… darkness… between the ages of 17 and 22, and when I look back on that person now it seems like another lifetime.
I would qualify too, olives: another incarnation really (which is why I often use a handle with “2nd” in it-tho I guess you’re working on your 4th then:D).
My best work buddy was in his early 30s when he suffered a stroke.
When he came back to work his personality had altered radically, and not for the better. Before he had been a funny guy everyone liked, when he came back he was a hateful, spiteful jerk. Everyone made comments behind his back and speculated about whether or not it was temporary.
Sadly, it was not. I changed jobs 2 years later and last I heard he was still a jerk. 
My grandfather used to be a very fesity, strong-willed man, and although he and me grandfather had one of the most loving relationships I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness, they did do a lot of the old-married-couple-bickering thing. He was also super-energetic, always a whirlwind around the house, very physically strong (although he was not a large man), and just generally a force of nature.
The, in his late 70s and early 80s, he had a couple of major health crises (multiple myeloma and a brain hemmorhage requiring emergency surgery) within a few years. He survived both, through positive attitude and sheer stubbornness - in fact, he didn’t even tell the rest of the family about the cancer until he knew he was in remission, because he and my grandmother didn’t want us to worry about him. (Did I say Grandpop was pigheaded?)
After that, though, his personality definitely changed - he lost a good deal of his strength and energy (but hey, by this point he was in his 80s, so it may have happened anyway), along with a good deal of muscle mass, but he also became much more mild-tempered and less argumentative.
Someone close to me was a heavy drinker who quit, with very little help. He was a much nicer guy, but he had relatively little understanding of the person he’d been while drinking, or why I was still emotionally wary around him.
My friend’s husband, who had been a really nice, good guy whom I genuinely liked, developed some sort of severe depression (I’m not clear on the exact diagnosis) that he wouldn’t get treated. He was cruel to my friend, he once told me, when my friend wasn’t around, that he wanted to commit suicide (I am not qualified to deal with that sort of statement and had no idea what to say), he couldn’t hold down a job…it was horrible. My friend stayed with him for about three years into this because she was afraid he would commit suicide if she left. Eventually she got counseling of her own and realized he was ruining not just his own life, but hers as well, and initiated the divorce.
Last I heard, he was living with his parents. I hope he’s doing better, because it was tragic to watch someone who had previously been an intelligent and kind person deteriorate like that.