Caregiver for spouse with MCI (Mild cognitive impairment)

@twiggy24
Hang in there twiggy. Frustration on their part is normal. From my experience, it helped when I act supportive and always give assurance. It calmed down my husband. He is past that stage. He is at a different level now. It's still frustrating on my part but I always remind myself that it is not him, nor his fault. It's unfortunately part of his illness. Positivity and negativity resonates to their emotions, so I try to stay positive. I treat repetitive questions as if it's his first time asking me. No sense stressing. When he started repeating himself, I alerted is primary care doctor. We got a referral to Cleveland Clinic. After brain biopsy, he was diagnosed with mild dementia with alzheimer's. Support groups, therapies, workshops started after diagnosis, which helps a lot.
You might want to ask his doctor about his changed behavior. I hope your husband doesn't have dementia.

@twiggy24
Hang in there twiggy. Frustration on their part is normal. From my experience, it helped when I act supportive and always give assurance. It calmed down my husband. He is past that stage. He is at a different level now. It's still frustrating on my part but I always remind myself that it is not him, nor his fault. It's unfortunately part of his illness. Positivity and negativity resonates to their emotions, so I try to stay positive. I treat repetitive questions as if it's his first time asking me. No sense stressing. When he started repeating himself, I alerted is primary care doctor. We got a referral to Cleveland Clinic. After brain biopsy, he was diagnosed with mild dementia with alzheimer's. Support groups, therapies, workshops started after diagnosis, which helps a lot.
You might want to ask his doctor about his changed behavior. I hope your husband doesn't have dementia.

I am also having trouble wrapping my head around this diagnosis. My husband has MCI but I feel that he is using the diagnosis as an excuse to not remember things. He is saying things like "You may tell something but I will probably forget it". It feels like a losing battle!! Yet he can come home from golf and tell my every shot he had! I am so confused as to what to feel bad about. Any suggestions would be helpful!
Also, we were hoping to get him started on the infusions and they are being held up by insurance.
Thanks for allowing me to vent!

@oneputt Hi there, I'm new to this site and I guess new to this part of our journey in life which I never saw coming. I could relate totally to what you were saying. My husband told me years ago that he is dyslexic and I suppose it hadn't really come up which sounds silly to say now, but he was very good at hiding it. It came more into play when our younger son was diagnosed as autistic and the whole assessments happened because my gut was telling me there was a difference in how he was as a toddler to my older son and I pushed for him to be seen by speech and language therapists, occupational therapists and psychologists to get answers. The the real fighting for your child's education came into play. I took care of all of the finances in the house, pretty much all of the bills except for the TV and streaming services as my husband managed to do those and lock us into contracts before I knew it. I too have been the rock the family leans on, he has never been my rock.
He's had bad health for most of our 35 year marriage, cancer just after we started going out which we then discovered decades later that the radiation he had in the chest area had hardened his heart and other organs. 2 years ago, he had a cardiac arrest, then a TAVI procedure. About 4 months after the TAVI, he had an MRI which showed he had a mini stroke. he ok but fatigued a lot of the time. He had another MRI recently and was told he has cerebral vascular disease, unsure if it it a pre MCI condition or a different way of putting it. But over the last 9 months his cognitive behaviour has gone down a lot the last few months. it could be longer but he might have held off telling me about it. Some days he is fine and others he forgets things, will walk off in the middle or me talking for no reason, repeats things and brings out his anger at me. He's broken small appliances and things from frustration He doesn't tell me when it happens and claims not to know anything about them when I find the broken ones. If he is nasty verbally, he has come down later, said he is sorry. Then say he doesn't remember what he said and that he doesn't want to know. That, not wanting to know cuts me to the core. We got told at his cardiac appointment on Monday that there is too much calcium on his mitral value so no insert can be done and he is too high risk for invasive surgery.
I am mentally and physically exhausted in caring for both my husband and younger son. My husband is 59 and my younger son is 21

@dandreal9071
I'd like to edit my post, I meant brain MRI, not "brain biopsy".

@dandreal9071 Thank you! I've been thinking about the brain biopsy since yesterday. 😲