Hey there, welcome to the Shalene Show. Thanks so much for taking a ride with me. We do this on Fridays.

My show releases on Monday and Wednesdays and Fridays is kind of a grab bag, meaning Mondays and Wednesdays we talk about, you know, all things related to life.

But at the moment we're in a season, the Alzheimer season. And so I'm using Fridays for this season to kind of vent and talk about it.

And so I just appreciate you tuning in, whether that's you're caring for a loved one, or you have parents who are boomers, this is just a really common, unfortunately, disease that too many people just don't know enough about.

And I wanted to use this platform to help shed some light on it and also to help me process through all that kind of makes sense of it. So thanks for being here. Let's do it.

Well, I know last week's episode was really emotional and I got messed just from so many of you. I feel bad because I know some of you, like, you know, you are not prepared to be crying that hard.

And many of you were just crying because you heard me crying. And thanks for letting me do that. I just want you to know, like, the real deal.

And I post videos and updates about Bob on my stories. And I really try to make sure it's dignified, you know, so you can see his essence. You can see how awesome he is.

But also not to, like, sugarcoat it and pretend that it doesn't happen. I just couldn't find, you know, me. I'm a researcher. And as soon as we found out Bob was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in 2016, I went into research mode and I found all the books.

And I found a few YouTube series, but there just aren't many. And there weren't many where you could actually watch the person who had Alzheimer's to know what you would could expect.

At this stage, Bob's at stage late five, I think, it's hard to say because some days he seems a lot better. And he seems like early five and some days he seems like late five. But anyways, I couldn't find any videos of someone at stage five.

I found like one. And so in my mind, I thought it would look a lot different. I thought I just didn't know it would still be so lovely that you would get these little moments of their personality and these moments of joy and funny things.

And like that, you know, sometimes as humor is like spot freaking on and sometimes he's cocky. And then sometimes he can't remember what a fork is.

So it's weird. And I just know that I really appreciated that one video I could find. And so I hope that by sharing these videos, it gives people a sense of like, first of all, what they're capable of.

Number one, number two, what it kind of looks like. So it's not so scary. And I also hope that it brings awareness to Alzheimer's because it just doesn't make sense.

So we can't solve this. We can't figure it out. We can't. And thank you to for everyone who's reached out to share with me, like things you can do for reversal, like, you know, rubbing oils on his temples. That guy's love ya, love ya. Trust me when I say we've done all of our research.

And at the stage that Bob is at, there isn't a reversal. There's a slowing. We can definitely slow the progression. And that's what we're doing our best to do.

But all of this to say that there's also a real side to this that isn't always with like, pretty music behind it and, you know, kind of chopped up into a highlight real like because when I make these videos of Bob, you can see them on my Instagram.

Actually, I know my TikTok too. I post a lot of my TikTok. I'll put both links to my TikTok and my Instagram in our show notes. You can just follow me there. But I'm Shaleen Johnson on both.

But they, you know, they're 30 seconds. So you're not really getting a sense of how long the day can be. And so this show also, you know, doing these episodes really kind of helps me shed some more light on it for those of you who are really going through it too to get the full picture.

So where we're at, Brett and I went away for four days. It was my birthday. Thank you so much for all of the reviews. I actually started today. My morning off by looking at, oh my gosh, you guys. You're so amazing. I love you. Seriously.

I don't even know what to tell you. It's like better than a birthday card.

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