My wife is 40 years old and was diagnosed in early 2007. Because I'm older, we both stopped working later that year and began traveling to all the places left on our travel list. It was great the first few years, but in 2011 we made our last grand cruise. It became too difficult with her physical and emotional deterioration. All symptoms are now apparent from anger, anxiety, OCD and aggression to physical movements, speech impairment, and falling down. I now find myself walking on eggshells and feeling less and less close to her present-day self, but still very much dedicated to our past memories and love. We sleep in separate rooms for nearly two years now. She cannot be physically close to me, she cannot reason well, and she only wants her daily routine. Any deviation from this upsets her, and I pay the emotional price with her outbursts. I understand this is not the woman with whom I fell in love and lived many wonderful years of married life; but it is my new reality. I will take care of her until the end. We have good insurance, so she has the best of care at home, but wondering when will be the right time for better care in a good facility. For me: I'm coping, but don't know if I can do it alone. Life continues.

I met a man four years ago who was diagnosed with HD when he was in his 20's. After dating for 6 months, he revealed that he had being diagnosed with HD and that his father had passed away from the same disease. I decided to stay in the relationship as I considered him to be a good man. One year into the relationship I began to notice some slight impairment with his physical movements. Then as the years went by he began to exhibit some outbursts of anger/rage. His thinking became very rigid and he became very self-absorbed and spending a big part of his life chatting on-line with many females. I was hard to stay as he blamed all of the relationship problems on me. He became very verbally abusive and in the end, in spite all my love for him, I had to leave him as I found it extremely hard to continue to be objective and understanding. I needed to leave because I was not able to cope with the abuse. It was a difficult decision to leave because I loved him.

My son is 40 years old with a strong family history, on his father's side, of HD. He has recently begun showing sx of HD: muscle twitching, slurred speech when tired, difficulty focusing, frequent falls and agitation. He also has hypertension and is on medication for it. I was wondering if anyone has ever done a study on the relationship between hypertension and HD. He has just gone for 4 weeks with excellent bp and then a couple of nights ago his bp went to 140/112. He became flushed, agitated, got a headache and became extremely tired. He went to the emergency room where they did several blood tests and a head CT that all came out normal. While in the hospital, his bp slowly came down within normal range without any meds or IVs. Today the same thing started to happen, didn't go quite that high, went to about 160/88. Same thing happened with the bp going down on its own slowly throughout the night. No one seems interested in correlating this to HD so I was wondering if anyone else has had the same or similar experience.

I am the mother of a beautiful daughter who is now 26 years old. She was diagnosed with Huntington disease at the tender age of 13. She's now getting worse in this terrible disease. I now have to think about a nursing home, and it's not easy for me at all. I don't even know where to start. It's so hard. I love my daughter so much. She's been a joy in my life. I can't imagine what I would do without caring for her.

I am the youngest (female) of four children. (One sibling died at the age of 2.) I am 45 years old, and my mother had Huntington's throughout my childhood. I was 13 when she became completely bedridden and took care of her until she died when I was 31. My sister (age 52) and my brother (age 61) both now have Huntington's. My brother and I chose not to have children and have never been tested. My sister has three children who also have children. Watching her suffer with this disease is so very difficult. The worst is that she will not allow any of us to help her; she becomes very violent. Her hygiene is horrible, but we are unable to convince her to let us help her. She is a smoker, and it is purely a miracle that she has not burned down the home. She lives with my two nephews and his small daughter. There are about 100 burn holes in her mattress. She will not go to any doctor; therefore, her health aside from Huntington's is a mess. I worry constantly about her well-being and her children. I am about to go before a judge to see if they will grant a court order to have her picked up and forced into our local hospital.

I am a 40 year old with HD and went through the disease with my father and other uncle and aunt. I know what he went through my wife of 16 years and 3 kids waited for me to get the disease before divorcing because of symptoms of the disease. I never once laid hand on her or the kids but she divorced over arguments. Just told me she knew I had HD and she bailed leaving me alone fully symptomatic, she told me to move on I am not her problem anymore. To punish me even she said it with grin on her face as if she enjoyed watching me suffer. She made sure I was completely alone and symptomatic before divorcing me to make sure I would not be able to find someone to help me through this. I have 3 kids 13, 9, 5 that she wants me to help them. She refused to help me in any way with trials or anything.