Posted on 01/18/2021 7:19:03 AM PST by texas booster
Dallas’ former chief is disappearing.
Sarah Dodd knew something was wrong with her husband in November 2019.
Though, if she’s being honest, she began to worry at least a year before that, probably longer. Something she couldn’t yet define, something still more feeling than fact. Just that thing, said the former television reporter, “when you’re around someone you love and you know when that person is not …”
“... When that person is not himself.”
Nov. 14, 2019, was one day after Dodd’s husband, former Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle, turned 69. To celebrate, the couple flew to Santa Barbara, Calif., for a long-planned, eagerly anticipated five-day trip. But days before they were to depart, Dodd said recently, Kunkle grew anxious and agitated — the opposite of the composed, rational, carefully logical chief of police she famously wed in December 2006.
Dodd said Kunkle kept asking, “We’re not really going, are we?” Buried in work, as a City Hall lobbyist and public-affairs strategist, Dodd waved off her husband’s growing irritation. The former chief of police in Dallas, and before that Grand Prairie and Arlington, said he was merely “tired” and really didn’t want to go....
“It’s hard to describe, that feeling of having your life turned upside down,” she said. Of not recognizing her husband. “That’s what made it terrifying.” ...
Its symptoms are myriad, a jumble of indicators ranging from sleeping problems to cognitive impairment to visual hallucinations, and they can appear and vanish with little warning. And diagnosing it can be difficult, Kelley said, as Lewy body dementia can happen all by itself or in combination with other brain disorders.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Shortly after their trip to California, Kunkle was diagnosed for the first time with Lewy body dementia — for most, an unfamiliar moniker for a disease caused when protein deposits, called Lewy bodies, develop in nerve cells in the parts of the brain tasked with thought, memory and movement. Researchers believe one in five Alzheimer’s patients suffers from it — more than 1.5 million in the U.S. alone — though seldom is its name ever mentioned.
If you know the disease at all, perhaps that is because Robin Williams suffered from Lewy body dementia. In the fall of 2016, his wife, Susan, documented in the pages of the journal Neurology how the disease slowly consumed the actor, how random and devastating the symptoms were, how no diagnosis ever seemed to be the right one. Susan Williams wrote that, ultimately, her husband was consumed by “the terrorist within his brain.”
An excellent article about Alzheimers and dementia. These are diseases that may affect many of the Free Republic family, and I felt that this article was a very good description of the effects.
“To celebrate, the couple flew to Santa Barbara, Calif....”
That’s a red flag...they are both nuts.
That’s a red flag...they are both nuts.
PS
Dear disappointed:
My father passed away from Lewy Bodies in 2001.
Sincerely,
CA wasn't always ruled by such nut cases.
My mother had it. Don’t wish it on anyone.
I know..I loved CA when I was there several times decades ago.
Watch the series, Boss, starring Kelsey Grammer.
He plays the mayor of Chicago. You learn at the very beginning scene he is diagnosed with Lewy Body Dementia. From there his symptoms manifest as he tries to keep running his city.
It is only 2 seasons. It is very well done. Kelsey thought at the time one reason for the cancellation of such a good show was his conservative politics in real life.
Just another note, I knew a man at my gym when I lived in Omaha who everyone called marathon man. He started exhibiting odd behavior people didn’t understand and was quite unlike him. He finally disappeared from the gym, something you notice after daily workouts for years. We learned later he’d died a very sad death of Lewy Body. I only recognized that name because I’d seen the TV series, Boss.
My BIL has it. Its a terrible thing to watch happen to someone.
Sorry to hear that. It certainly is terrible. Prayers up.
Ouch. So sorry for your loss.
Thank you.
Lewy can be quick...I think it’s the quickest of the dementias. Dad was about a year. Incredible hallucinations a big part of it.
So sorry to hear anyone affected by this disease. I didn’t know about LBD until I saw the movie “Robins Wish” which is all about Robin Williams and accounts by his (now) widow. Its pretty intense if you havent seen it.
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