[im_down_w_otp]

This is currently happening to my grandfather. He played football most of his life and up through adulthood for the Philadelphia Eagles before leaving the sport to pursue his passion for flying (eventually becoming a captain for Delta).

He's had a charmed life. Lots of great experiences, like a real-life Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn, and the stories to go along with them.

Now's he battling (and losing) with the late-stage effects of dozens of concussions, which is manifesting itself as severe short-term memory loss, increasingly poor long-term recall, and eventually the inevitable situation where he doesn't recognize his own children, only grandchild, and only great grandchild. My father also played football most of his life (but not at the same level), and I'm concerned the same thing will eventually happen to him.

I'm very thankful to have had my grandfather in my life for so long (I'm now 37), and I have so many really wonderful memories and experiences that I can attribute to him (sitting in the cockpit of a 727 as a toddler, flying in the family little Piper Cub, countless lovely tailgate parties, a huge loving extended family of his long-time friends, etc), and I want to make sure that in the short window that's left where he's able to be at-least present in the moment that myself and my young son spend ample time with him.

It's difficult to watch the decline, but I can't imagine how difficult it must be for him to be living it.

[curun1r]

I'm basically your age and my grandmother passed away from Alzheimers almost 10 years ago. It was another 5 before that when she last recognized anyone in our family. She neither played football nor had any history of concussion that any of us are aware of.

The point being, from what I've seen on the subject, there's no way to diagnose CTE until the patient has passed away and you can slice open their brain. It's possible that your grandfather's symptoms are related to his concussions, but it's also very possible that it would have happened anyways. CTE usually manifests 8-10 years after these brain injuries and has a lot of symptoms beyond the dementia you list, so it could be garden-variety Alzheimers.

Regardless, you have my sympathies. Alzheimers-type dementia is truly a terrible way to lose a loved one. The anti-climactic nature of it makes it really difficult to get closure in the way that you do when someone's death is more abrupt. Instead, they slowly fade away in the "boiled frog" fashion and you're left at whatever funeral you end up having realizing that they died a long time before their body expired and you never got to grieve. Be sure that you're intentional in remembering the person he used to be and don't let the empty shell of a person that exists now replace that in your memory. I didn't do that enough and it made grieving for my grandmother very difficult.

If there's a silver lining to my story, my mother is now past the age when her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimers and is, thus far, not showing signs of the disease. Given some of the research that's tying Alzheimers to particulate air pollution, I'm hopeful that the strides made by the EPA and others in reducing our air pollution will mean that she won't have to go through that ordeal and I won't have to lose her the way I lost my grandmother. If your dad is more than a decade past his football-playing days and symptoms haven't shown up, there's a good chance that he won't either.