Page 24 - Layout 1
P. 24
FEATURE:
IN REAL TIME
IN REAL TIME Part 2
Fronto Temporal Dementia
By Rajam Ramamurthy, MD
The Search for a Diagnosis come and I asked them to wait till we were further along with the
medical investigations. I also called N’s brother, a urologist, who is
Dad is not well. I don’t know what is wrong. The first two calls I in the U.S. and I talked to his sister, also a physician, in India.
made was to our son who lives in New York and our daughter who
lives in Richmond. I narrated the events after we had returned from Our visit with the Neurologist was nerve wrecking for me. For
Cambodia and Vietnam. My phone conversations were mostly done current complaints, N would mention lack of sleep, bad dreams that
in our frontyard as I walked around our circular driveway. I did not kept him up and, in one dream, a voice was instructing him. He has
want to discuss the topic in my husband’s presence. How do you repeated this narrative so many times that it is etched in my memory.
tell grown children that their father is talking “Inappropriate” a word I quote, “I am up at 2:30 in the night. My leg is cramping and I
I found much easier to say than ‘Sexual’? The children wanted to want to flex it and the voice is saying, ‘Don’t worry, I will take care
of it.’ My nose is itching and I want to scratch and the voice says,
‘Don’t worry, I will take care of it.’ Two and a half hours go by and
I want to turn and the voice says, ‘OK, you can turn now.’” N never
did or perhaps couldn’t mention the other behavior issues to the
neurologist. I would then start narrating the symptoms from my
24 San Antonio Medicine • August 2016
