Comments on living with fibromyalgia and vascular dementia.

I've been the primary caregiver for my wife for about 35 years, fortunately not 24/7 until 7 years ago when she fell and had a THR. About 4 years ago she was Dx's with vascular dementia. Since then I've been her caregiver 24/7. With her dementia I began going to Az help group once a month. Great help knowing what was going on with her. First thing I got the book "The 36 hour day". I suggest anyone facing any type of dementia get it. At first it wasn't much of a problem for me but she had a couple of hospital stays and rehab stays. When she got home she was mostly bed bound. It got to be too much for me alone so I contacted the local Social Services gal who helped me to get her on some state assistance; home health care once a week and homemaker twice a week for two hours each day. There were a couple of instances she had to go to the rehab place. Both times she decided to sign herself out AMA, which she had the right to do since she was competent but it played hob with the help (long story). It got to the point where I was grinding my teeth all day (didn't realize it was stress). Finally we got 5 day X 4 hours help and since then things have evened out. Today she had an appointment with her Neurologist to hear the results of her test last week. Mostly it was good news with the caveat that there was a very slight loss between the first test 4 years ago and last week. She is 79 and with only minor short term memory loss. Still she is constantly asking me where we are going and why. The answer is generally "Oh". Fortunately I'm pretty much laid back, not much disturbs my Psyche. In reality this is sort of an introduction though I've posted here before.