Man Diagnosed With Alzheimer's At Age 51 Faces The Disease

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

About five years ago, Jeff Craddock - who was in his 50s - kept very busy directing and editing films for the Harvard Business School. However, both his colleagues and his wife noticed a change in him, as he found it difficult to perform simple tasks and was forgetful, asking the same question several times. "That behavior seemed strange to me," his wife Elissa Carreras told PEOPLE. "This is how our medical research began." After leaving work due to medical disability in 2017, a neurologist diagnosed him with Alzheimer's in April 2018, when Jeff was just 51 years old. The man, who is now 53 years old and lives in Medford, Massachusetts, confesses that he broke down crying when he got home.

He had no history of Alzheimer's in the family and was in shock. However, the advice of his neurologist stuck with him: "I recommend that you look at your list of dreams to fulfill before you die and that you do what you want to do with your children as soon as possible."

The couple had always dreamed of visiting several parks in the United States with their three children who are now 17, 14 and 12 years old. So they decided to buy a school bus and using simple tasks and letting them think they would end up getting divorced. "He really went offline," Carreras says. "I wondered over and over when it was a medical appointment, and the chores that were his responsibility at home were not done."

After the diagnosis, she was able to understand her husband's behavior and understood that it was not his lack of interest. "He wasn't behaving like this because he wanted to," she adds. Her peers at church were a great support to the family. Jeff also started a healthy diet rich in green vegetables and started walking with his pet, trying to see the positive side of his new lifestyle. "We're going to focus on what we can enjoy," Carreras concludes, adding that the family has another trip planned in April to the Grand Canyon in Colorado.