Every year since 2012, I’ve sat my dad down for an interview on tape. It originally started because friends that don’t live nearby (or who were hesitant to visit him in the dementia care facility) kept wanting to know how he was. I figured the best way to show them was to videotape him and put it on his Facebook page. Then, it became kind of a project to document the progression of the disease. We become so accustomed to the new normal that it seems like he’s always been this way. But when we sat down this weekend and watched the last few interviews before taping him later that day, it was kind of shocking to see the stark contrast between the first video and the last. The first video, at the time, was hard to watch, because it was so much worse than who he’d been before the dementia, but it’s nothing compared to where he is now. I wish we had taped him after he was first diagnosed in 2008, but it just didn’t occur to me that I’d want it for reference later. The first time we taped him was about a year after he’d been in the dementia care facility. So, for anyone who’s interested, here is the series of video interviews from 2012 to the present. They’re not super exciting to watch, but it’s interesting to see how some things are so ingrained that they’ve stuck around, and others disappear with each passing year. We tried to repeat a lot of the questions from one year to the next for continuity. You can also see how heavy he’d gotten, and that he’s started losing weight now that he’s not eating compulsively.

2012:

2013:

2014:

2015: