![]() Jim Butler : I’m proud of what I see around Chicago and in the stores in Michigan, Chicago or wherever I’m at. Has this time been difficult for you and how are you dealing with COVID-19? But those are all coping mechanisms for me and my way of dealing with this.īeing Patient: The coronavirus outbreak is on everyone’s mind. I don’t know but I was with a guy who was a good friend of mine that I can talk to.Īgain, the stuff that’s knocking around my head, that I’m tripping over and having a hard time with and not wanting to talk about are the things that I need to talk about to someone and not always my wife. It could just be me being critical of myself. I said, “Sometimes, I think these cognitive issues are getting a little worse I think.” And Bob said, “Jeez, I didn’t know that was a thing, Jim.” And I thank him for that. I didn’t share that with my wife.īut I did share that with Bob today. When we were driving back, Bob and I were talking and I was telling him, “You know what? These last couple days-maybe I have too many moving parts going on-but I feel like I’m getting worse.” That is what I shared with Bob. Everybody is social distancing of course but the lakefront was full of people and the dogs were running around. It was 55 degrees in Chicago and at this time of the year in Chicago-that’s a gift. We took them to a lakefront here in Chicago. Jim Butler : I met a friend of mine and we both have dogs. I’m blessed with a lot of good people in my life and I want to live up to that.īeing Patient: What are some of your coping strategies? I don’t know how much time I’m going to have going forward and I don’t want to waste a darn bit of it by being resentful. I’ve got a great marriage and a lot of wonderful people in my life and I’m financially secure. ![]() But it’s real important for me to pull myself out of there. I certainly have frustrations and I don’t mean to sit here and talk on this program and say I don’t get frustrated, pissed off, really sad and heartbroken. I try and make it my business to enjoy every day. There are difficult days like every darn thing I try to accomplish is so complicated and frustrating. You just close your eyes and think about it for a moment. I don’t mean to say that I don’t have forgetfulness-I do, my forgetfulness happens dozens of times a day-but it’s not the kind of thing where you trip. Some days, I’m just sailing through a lot of stuff. Jim Butler : I don’t ever have the thought that, “Hey, I don’t feel like I have it.” But some days are easier and more fluid and they work better than other days. They showed the tau and amyloid that are markers of Alzheimer’s.īeing Patient: Patients describe that there are these periods of lucidity that appear, days when there seems to be nothing wrong while there are other days when they seem to be slipping down that slope. I ended up getting an MRI and eventually a lumbar puncture. It started out with cognitive testing and memory testing. You get to flunk your way into the next test. Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago is quite the big player in the Midwest here. You start off with the cognitive testing. Jim Butler : It was probably a three month process until we got the diagnosis. When I was doing it, I’d always think: “My dear, I have Alzheimer’s.” That was kind of in the background for me for that year or year and a half before I reached out and engaged with it that I was thinking, “Am I going where my dad went?”īeing Patient: What was it like getting an Alzheimer’s diagnosis for you-was it a lengthy process? ![]() I didn’t pick that up from anybody that they were noticing my forgetfulness and I certainly wasn’t sharing it with anybody. You need to address it.”īeing Patient: At that point when you were noticing something was wrong, were other people like your wife or people you’re close to picking up signs or did you disguise it well? You’ve been thinking about this for a year and you need to look at it. And I was thinking to myself: “There’s something going on. I was leaving the Apple store and I was going to our second home in Michigan. That was the thing that resonated with me strongly. ![]() High Technology, but they gave me a new phone. My phone conked out and I went in there and I had never been Mr. I had an issue at the Apple store in Chicago. But I’m a guy so I would just get angry and blow it off. I would be having trouble doing something that I was trying to accomplish. Jim Butler : My father would say: My clutch was slipping in an old stick shift car. Being Patient: When did you first notice that maybe something was wrong? How did it first manifest? ![]()
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