To Nananina, your opinion is callous in the least. Having posted my original message, I read the first tranche of replies and set about doing some online research into depression and dementia based on people's suggestions. I eventually fell asleep at my computer at 3 a.m. Nevertheless, I was up at 7 as I knew I would need to persuade my husband to go to the ONE thing he DOES like attending once a month, which is a short walk along the canal with a U3A group followed by a pub lunch. I usually go with him, but last Thursday I fell badly in the garden and have hurt my knees and face, and jarred my body. I KNEW he wouldn't want to go without me, hence the two hours of persuasion. While he was out I loaded the car with thirty bags of garden rubbish to take to the tip, the knees just about coping, as despite me saying he has no interest in things, if I find him a straightforward job to do he will take part. So on his return we went to the tip. Back home and he helped me to finish cleaning our two little greenhouses (again, a straightforward job with no complications).
Having not used this site much, I had no idea how to get back to my post (and still don't, I landed on it by chance) - but I have responded to three private messages sent to me. After several attempts to find my post I turned to researching a trip I have seen involving a steam railway (remember, he likes trains) and we are going on Friday.
So to anyone who thinks I don't care, am not interested, am not returning to my post, they are wrong.
To answer some of the points from the vast majority of respondents who have been kind and understanding, the main thing is that I am tending to think is it is not dementia. I know, it presents in many ways, and I have first-hand experience of it with my mother and a recent friend being diagnosed - it is easy to miss the early signs. His memory has always been lacking, I have spent 45 years reminding him of things, but usually "everyday" things, so the discussion about comprehensive schools was an oddity. I might be wrong, and will bear it in mind as so many of you mentioned it.
I doubt it is the lack of structure since he stopped working. It is 7 years ago, and his job was never 9-5, and in the last 10 years didn't take up more than about 25 hours a week, 35 weeks of the year. So little structure there. That issue is more likely a concern for me, as my working week was typically 60 hours, and I DID suffer depression after retiring - fortunately picked up by my doctor, but my husband didn't notice me sitting around doing nothing, not getting showered or dressed, ignoring friends. He has probably forgotten it. So when the few people on here have told me I don't seem to care about him, well he didn't care about me back then either. And I did say it hadn't been a great marriage.
Re my daughters noticing anything amiss, it is only in the last few years that they have been at stages in their lives when they needed help with things like mortgages, wills, child-rearing and so on, and soon realised that Dad was not much use at advising them. Other than that, they seem to think he has got a bit slower, a bit less talkative, a bit this and that, but not enough to make any real comments. Plus they don't see him often - three or four times a year for no more than a day or two - so they aren't aware of how he is day-to-day.
There is no way I could ask him to accompany me to a doctor's appointment on the pretext that it was for me. He would assume immediately that I was dying or lying. I have had many health problems over the years and have never once asked him to come with me to the doctor. Yes, he has driven me to hospital appointments, but sat in the waiting room while I went in. That has always been my preference, I don't know why - probably because he would complicate it by asking irrelevant questions!
There is also no way I could persuade him to go to the doctor for himself, unless I can convince him that it is vital. He does have annual check-ups, as a result of the fact that about 5 years ago (having developed severe varicose veins in the front of one leg at least 5 years before that, and having ignored my requests for him to see a doctor), one of his leg veins developed into an ulcer, (which he chose to ignore for about six months) and he was eventually forced to see the GP when he could stand the pain no longer. The result was two years of hospital visits, biopsies, visits to the nurse for dressings, etc etc. All of which I accompanied him to, and changed the dressings.
So he does not have high blood pressure, or diabetes, or a thyroid problem (that's me - I haven't got a thyroid gland any more!
We used to have Well Man clinics, he would never have gone, but they have been stopped.
Re his health, he seems to think he is invincible. We both smoke, and I have urged him to give up with me, or help me to give up. Our daughter with the kiddies has said they cannot come to our house till we give up, but it has no effect on him. I have BEGGED him to at least try, but no chance. Who is the one who is insensitive?
We are both unfit. I have tried to instigate a walk every day, but he can't be bothered. He manages to do it for a few days but then tells me he must spend the day doing something else - which doesn't get done.
Now, very interesting from Cherrytree - thank you. I did not mention in my original post his gait and posture. Whilst he has never been a particularly smart-looking man, who walks as if he has a purpose, he was, until recently, perfectly average. About 2 years ago I noticed that when he sat at the breakfast table opposite me he was slumped in the seat. I chastised him about it, and he rectified it - for a short while. I chastised him again a few weeks later, and again, and eventually gave up. He was 5-foot 11 when I married him. Now, if we are sitting round a table with friends, he looks like a dwarf compared to everyone else, scrunched up in his seat. I assume that is laziness - don't shout at me!
But about the same time I noticed him shuffling his feet across the kitchen floor, not picking them up at all. I told him he would ruin the (new and expensive) floor if he carried on like that, and after several repeats of this he stopped doing it. The next issue was the "plopping" when walking. He seemed to thump his right leg on the floor with every step. Kerplonk, kerplonk. It irritated me (yes, I am such a cruel person Nananina). He stopped doing that for a while, but to me it was a sign that something other than laziness was the cause. I mean, you don't plonk on a particular leg without a reason, do you? I further noticed that he was walking in a flat-footed manner, not via heel-and-toe. He denied all this, said he wasn't walking like that, said I was determined to find something that said he was ill, and I wouldn't be pleased till I had done so. Such is our loving relationship.
And then I read Cherrytree's swaying comment. We went to a model railway exhibition (organised by me, the wife who doesn't care, for the husband who likes model railways), and he went off in a different direction to me. He had been gone for quite a while and I was looking for him, down a corridor full of people walking towards me. I spotted him easily - his was the head going from side to side by about a foot with each step.
Is that a sign of dementia Cherrytree? Another friend who hadn't seen him for a while, witnessed his stooped and swaying gait and remarked "What is wrong with him? Has he got Parkinson's?". I relayed this idea to him and he scoffed at me, repeating that I wouldn't be satisfied till I had found him to be ill, and if I carried on like this I was actually making him ill.
However, I know not how, I DID get him to see his GP about 18 months ago, regarding the plopping and the swaying. She referred him to a physio who gave him exercises to do. He never did them despite me saying we would do them together. The physio eventually referred him for free session at a local gym. He went religiously two days a week for 3 months. I noticed no improvement. They also gave him exercises to do at home, and he did none of them. On his final session he proudly told me that he had done really well on the treadmill that day - he had got up to a mile an hour. A mile an hour? Isn't that a strolling speed? Hardly a notch on the treadmill I would have thought. And as I said, I am not fit either, but a mile an hour!
To answer the person who asked am I not worried, do you still think I am not worried? Maybe I am worried for ME, for the burden I might have to endure with a sick husband, but despite it not being a great marriage, I will do my best for him, cos I could not leave him to his own devices.
You can rest assured that if it were me who had a problem with my gait or posture or memory, he would do bugger all about it. He wouldn't be arranging trips to places of interest to me. I've been ill. I've seen how he copes. He sits me on the settee and I instruct him what to bring to make me comfortable, and then he goes off to another room to do, er, nothing much. I might get a cup of tea brought in, but no conversation, no stimulation, no suggested of a gentle outing somewhere. I could sit there for years in the same position and he would do nothing.
Whereas I am seeking advice on this site as to what might be wrong with my husband and how to handle it.
Yes, I am bursting with rage, but I have cried buckets while writing this, thanks to people like Nananina.
I don't think there is an answer.
