{"id":2212,"date":"2017-01-25T15:05:44","date_gmt":"2017-01-25T21:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/?p=2212"},"modified":"2020-08-19T08:55:49","modified_gmt":"2020-08-19T13:55:49","slug":"local-man-starts-the-first-alabama-frontotemporal-degeneration-caregiver-support-group","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/?p=2212","title":{"rendered":"Local man starts the first Alabama Frontotemporal Degeneration Caregiver Support Group"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jerry\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Jerry Horn is a retired businessman who expected to spend his golden years traveling and enjoying his grandchildren. Instead, he has spent the last several years focused on caring for Debbie, his beloved wife of 44 years, proving his unfailing love while navigating life with her after a diagnosis of Frontotemporal Degeneration (FTD) combined with Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA) and Parkinsonism. The diagnosis alone is tough to say but that\u2019s nothing compared to the difficulties of living with this form of dementia that is the most common type for people under the age of 60. There is no cure or effective treatment to slow the progression of damage in the frontal and temporal parts of the brain that can make everyday life increasingly challenging. As neurons die in these regions, the lobes atrophy, wreaking havoc in thinking, communicating, walking, and may cause strange behaviors and poor judgment. The demanding task of providing care 24\/7 hasn’t stopped Jerry from trying to help others as well.<\/p>\n

So imagine how excited Jerry is to have successfully made connections to initiate an\u00a0Association of Frontotemporal Degeneration (AFTD) affiliated support group in our area.\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0This will be the first support group dedicated specifically to FTD caregivers in the state of Alabama. Collaborating with Audrey Hanline of Covenant Alzheimer’s Care<\/a>, the disease specific support group\u00a0will meet on the last Wednesday of each month at 5:30 pm at the Baldwin House Assisted Living Residence, located at 10171 Papa George St., in Daphne, AL (across from Lowe’s and Sam’s Club.) Jerry feels that it wasn’t his doing to pull this together. He states, ”\u00a0It may sound weird, but I sometimes think that God is giving me a second calling to become an advocate for FTD. The fact that I am surrounded by people of this caliber is not my doing, but God’s.”<\/div>\n

Jerry will finally be able to share with others who can understand his need to connect, receive and give support, and learn from each other’s experience. Jerry says, \u201cI see this as a major victory, and I hope that it is only the beginning of an entirely new focus on the FTD side of the dementia spectrum.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jerry is a living example of this quote from Anne Frank – \u201cHow wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this and other dementia support groups, see\u00a0caregivers unite.org blog\u00a0<\/a>or the\u00a0website calen<\/a>dar.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Jerry<\/a>\"Debbie\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jerry Horn is a retired businessman who expected to spend his golden years traveling and enjoying his grandchildren. Instead, he has spent the last several years focused on caring for Debbie, his beloved wife of 44 years, proving his unfailing love while navigating life with her after a diagnosis of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,99,15,26],"tags":[533,534,531,532],"class_list":["post-2212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-publication","category-caregiversunite-org","category-local-resource","category-support-groups","tag-aftd-support-group","tag-covenant-alzheimers-care","tag-ftd","tag-ppa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4cxZR-zG","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2212"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2578,"href":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2212\/revisions\/2578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.caregiversunite.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}