Frontotemporal Dementia

[FTD]

This post is for people who were in beautiful, stable, long-term marriages that suddenly blew up because a spouse went wild or suddenly fell out of love with you.

 

Your soulmate of 20 or 30 years did not want to leave you, your children and your adorable scene, and engage in one-night stands, and perhaps even drain all of your accounts. He or she was compelled to.

 

Please help me spread the word about a terminal brain disease that strikes people in their prime called Frontotemporal Dementia. This disease attacks the frontal lobe and/or temporal lobes, turning your husband/wife/lover into a stranger.

 

This disease is now believed to as prevalent in the 40 to 60 age group as Alzheimer's disease is in the older generation; however, FTD is commonly mistaken as a severe midlife crisis, marital difficulties or misdiagnosed as a psychiatric illness, stress, anxiety, and ADHD. The apathetic type is pegged depression.

 

Faithful, loving husbands or wives for a couple decades who suddenly start sleeping around, shoplifting, embezzling, stealing from a kid's sports account, or commit hit and runs likely have Frontotemporal Dementia.

[i am gutted]

This post is for people who were in beautiful, stable, long-term marriages that suddenly blew up because a spouse went wild or suddenly fell out of love with you.

 

Your soulmate of 20 or 30 years did not want to leave you, your children and your adorable scene, and engage in one-night stands, and perhaps even drain all of your accounts. He or she was compelled to.

 

Please help me spread the word about a terminal brain disease that strikes people in their prime called Frontotemporal Dementia. This disease attacks the frontal lobe and/or temporal lobes, turning your husband/wife/lover into a stranger.

 

This disease is now believed to as prevalent in the 40 to 60 age group as Alzheimer's disease is in the older generation; however, FTD is commonly mistaken as a severe midlife crisis, marital difficulties or misdiagnosed as a psychiatric illness, stress, anxiety, and ADHD. The apathetic type is pegged depression.

 

Faithful, loving husbands or wives for a couple decades who suddenly start sleeping around, shoplifting, embezzling, stealing from a kid's sports account, or commit hit and runs likely have Frontotemporal Dementia.

 

 

I hope this is sarcasm?

[carhill]

Yep, it's the change that should be watched for and evaluated. Pick's is as insidious, perhaps even more so, than EOAD (early onset Alzheimer's disease) because it attacks the decision-making center and often not slowly like the plaques and tangles of AD.

 

I wouldn't go as far as to state 'likely' to certain behaviors, but rather opine that it's wise to, when changes are observed, evaluate and have the person evaluated by experienced professionals.

 

I know, in our case, the patient had marked tissue degeneration and scarring which showed up on the MRI's taken early-on as well as throughout the disease process and was confirmed via brain examination after death. The disease was different, vascular paraphrenic dementia, but the process of evaluation is similar.

 

Currently, the brain is one of, if not the, least understood organ in our body so new information and research comes to light every day. What may seem 'fantastic' and 'beyond belief' today can easily be tomorrow's diagnosis. It's constantly changing.

 

The problem with brain maladies is that, unlike cancer of another organ, a heart attack, chronic pain and the like, the organ affected is the one which manages the rest of the body and the person's entire interaction with the world. It's easy to believe we willfully do everything we do; that our consciousness is absolute and sacrosanct and completely responsible for our entire lives. If that organ, the brain, is diseased or injured, however, it's often hard to separate out what's willful and what's 'the disease', especially as a layperson.

 

I had to spend a lot of time with brain specialists to get a grasp of things and how to manage where the line is. It was, admittedly, an imperfect science. Life can be like that.

[FTD]

Yes, Carhill:

 

They are discovering that FTD destroys certain brain circuits. For example, people with the behavioral variant are hit in the frontal lobe and right temporal lobe. People who present with language difficulties have atrophy in the left temporal lobe.

 

This disease is even more devastating than late-onset dementias because it strikes down people in their 40s and 50s, turning a mom or dad into someone remote, cold and unrecognizable,who destroys the family with no qualm whatsoever.

 

FTD and ALS researchers are working together now, because they have discovered an overlap in these two horrific diseases.

[SolG]

If you're interested Sapolsky gives a good account of Pick's in one of his behavioural biology lectures. (Can't remember which one, but if you head to Stanford's Youtube channel you'll find it eventually.)

 

Fascinatingly, one theory is that it is an adaptive genetic strategy to encourage later life procreation that otherwise may not occur. Given that for much of history human life expectancy was around 40 - 50 (or less), the theory is that degenerating prefrontal cortex functioning elicits (amongst other things) a surge in indiscriminate mating thereby making more offspring before (in this case accelerated) demise. It's about passing on as many gene copies as possible; our most strongly biologically coded purpose.

 

I know that's cold comfort for those that have to deal with someone afflicted with Pick's. Anyone with extreme character shifts should be subjected to medical examination; especially if there is a family history.