my husband and have our own buisness,and he always ran the accademic side as i did the hands on it has worked well for 40 years till he was diagnosed with vascular dementia,I now have to do all this as well as the pratical side, I am getting there slowley, but i feel so guilty having to take this side of the buisness out of his hand, as he cant do it now,He resents me for this and that adds extra preasure on me,I have tried giving him certain thing to do in the house but he just sits around most of the day or falling asleep is this normal or has any one else had this problem.I feel bad moaning about it just wonderd if im expecting to much thanks for listening from flower

Hello Flower.

During the time my husband and I were in business together there finally came a time, while he was largely succeeding in hiding his increasing onset of vascular dementia, that he stated that we had to get out of it before the coming Christmas. We did. He had a nervous breakdown, went to see holistic type counsellors but flatly refused to see a doctor. It was a nightmare. He was 63 then and for the next year and a bit we lived off our savings.

This is different from your experience but I am telling it to you so you perhaps can see that one way or another it is pretty well a nightmare for everybody. can you perhaps discuss some things with him and let him think you are taking his advice? Anything to allow him to think he still has some input. When my husband finally started attending a day care centre I told him he was going there to work - to help the nurses. He accepted that and I made sure the care workers knew that so they could go along with pretence.

So, dear Flower, your husband's behaviour sounds entirely 'normal' for someone in the well on early stages of the illness. There must be some back up for you - social services, local support groups. If you need any addresses in your area you could go on to the 'useful contacts' section of this web site and adapt phone numbers for your part of the world. You are totally welcome to have a good moan!!! You've got to let it out somewhere and only people who have some experience of this terrible situation can fruly understand how you feel - love, exasperation, anger, guilt. You are doing everything you can so apart from swearing at the sky put it in words on this site!!!

Best regards

Jill