Rose’s husband, Randy, had Broca’s aphasia. She talks about the frustration of taking over all the household duties and not having access to passwords.
My name is Rose Miller, my husband is Randy. We are from the St. Louis area in Missouri.
My husband had a stroke three years ago. All the responsibility falls on me, I did nothing with the money aspect, the investments, retirement plan, he handled all of that. While I might have wrote the checks, you know ‘yeah the money’s there’. So all of that financial responsibility, all the work - he did everything… I didn’t do that much. We both cleaned house, but we both worked full-time jobs. We kind of combined that, but he did all the outside work. Even with just aphasia he would have not been able to do any of that. It kind of all fell on me. Anything went wrong I’d be like… what do I do?
So then, what advice would you have for somebody who sees sort of that dynamic shift in such a drastic way all of a sudden, what would you say to them?
My best advice for any couple, any couple - I don’t care if it’s aphasia or not is to know each other’s passwords. I had the worst time trying to figure out passwords - he couldn’t tell me. My son actually would have to get on the phone and act like him and say ‘I forgot my password’. I would call places and we had our own separate credit cards and he had a couple business ones. I would call them and say ‘I need to figure out how to pay this bill’. He took care of his own and I just didn’t do it. He was the president a non-profit company, so I had all of those issues going on and they, nobody wanted to talk to me and I said “well if you want this bill paid, somebody needs to talk to me because he can’t do it.”