There was an article on the front page of the health section of our daily newspaper today from an interview my wife and I did a couple weeks ago. Here is the link. It is so hard to describe to anyone not diagnosed what it is like to have this disease. Among those of us diagnosed usually you don't even have to finish your sentence before someone knows exactly what you are talking about and someone else listening that isn't diagnosed often doesn't even really understand what we are trying to explain. That is why the online communities, one of which I started, comprised of all diagnosed people are so important to me and so many other diagnosed people. We have also been doing a weekly virtual support group with a program called "Zoom" that is a very nice video conferencing suite. Laura Bowley from Mindset has been so kind as to facilitate our weekly group. It is a concept that I hope will spread around the globe and bring support to so many that feel totally isolated with these diseases. Hopefully we are going to do a presentation at a national conference in 2014 about this new concept but that is still in the planning stage to see if it is feasible. Until next time, take care!
John

It is World Alzheimer's Awareness month in September. I have done 2 interviews already this month at the request of my local Alzheimer's Association Chapter. One was for an article to appear next week in our daily paper and the other was a TV interview for the news last night. That one was on short notice because they had covered that there were volunteers including me downtown handing out purple carnations for Alzheimer's awareness and they wanted to interview someone diagnosed. Here is a LINK to the story. It has been a very busy month so far and it seems that September is always a busy month between activities to do with Alzheimer's and family events it gets crazy. Sometimes it gets exhausting but it also gives me a purpose when I can do some advocating and trying to educate people that we are still people, each one of us unique with a terminal disease. Not so different than any other disease, it is just that this one is destroying our brains bit by bit so it is unusually cruel. There is no reason for fear however or to avoid the subject, or to not ask someone diagnosed how they are doing. It is a general consensus that when you are early stage it seems wrong to ignore the elephant in the room but it is amazing how many people do just that.