Story and photos by Lynnette oostmeyer

A detailed food chart hangs on the door of the kitchen pantry in a typical Carol Stream home. Phone alarms ring at scheduled times for various activities such as exercising, eating and going to the bathroom.

These are ways Tish Crawford used to organize her three kids’ lives and busy schedules while they were growing. Now, this method is used to take care of her husband Tim.

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Tim Crawford is a 51-year-old man living with Frontal Lobe Degeneration, a rare form of dementia that involves slow deterioration of the brain’s frontal lobe. The frontal region is responsible for reasoning, planning, parts of speech, movement, emotions and problem solving, and it is said to be where your personality lives. Disease diagnosis has been made in people as young as 30 but usually occurs and is diagnosed in one’s 50s or 60s.

Tim was diagnosed two years ago after several doctor’s visits and tests when he could no longer preform his job as an Apple technician Tish said. He started to have outbursts of anger and then fell into almost compete silence as his symptoms progressed, she said.

“I prayed to God and said ‘I just wanted my husband back, and if you cant give him back to me I just want him to interact with me. Let him talk again because I can’t stand this person who just stares at me and doesn’t know what to say,’” she said.

In the two years since his diagnosis Tim’s IQ has dropped from 185, well above average, to about 95, the average IQ of a 5-year-old boy.

“The change in him has been extremely drastic since his diagnosis,” Tish said. “Mentally, Tim is now a child. We raised three kids together, and now its like he’s my fourth kid.”

Tim’s life is now scheduled for him. His daughter watches him during the day and follows a schedule that Tish wrote. He doesn’t know right from wrong, safe from dangerous or mean from nice, Tish said. He has outbursts in public and has lost most control over his moral actions. He has to have planned meals or he will forget he ate, she said, as well as having scheduled bathroom times or he will forget to go and have an accident.

They expect Tim to live for 10 more years.

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“Not only is it painful for him, its painful for those taking care of him. It’s a total loss of control,” Tish said. “Coming from such a high IQ that he had, its just hard, I think his mind just couldn’t take much more. He always excelled at everything, I don’t know, I don’t know.”

Tim is on various medications that help him regulate mood and personality to medications that help with brain health and development. Tish organizes his medications, and he is alerted by a phone alarm when he needs to take them.

Tish helps Tim try on slippers at a department store. When they go out in public, Tish-or whoever is with Tim-caries around business cards that explain what Frontal Lobe Degeneration is so if he has an outburst they can hand out the card and give people an understanding of why he is acting the way he is.