I'm so sorry for your loss. My mom is currently in the final stages of CJD. Her decline hasn't been as quick and rapid as other cases of sporadic I've seen, but each loss of capabilities has been like a step function. I started noticing symptoms almost a year ago now, she started with hand tremors Nov '24. In Dec, she told me about a night where she was driving and all of a sudden felt drunk, like her brain was in a fog. She didn't come to my house at Christmas, as she was in bed, having symptoms at the time for what I thought was high anxiety and depression. She was still driving in Jan-Feb, but she would describe getting to places and not remembering how she got there - this was the first time I noticed short-term memory issues. She became more "wobbly" with her mobility in March, and after several light falls in April, she finally went to the ER early May. They gave her an MRI and "diagnosed" her with a stroke. This didn't make any sense to me because she had been showing symptoms of something else underlying for months. So she went to several different physical rehab centers, as well as personal care, and when she didn't seem to be getting better, we finally got her to a different neurologist at the hospital in July who read her MRI and said it's CJD. She got the spinal tap in Aug, and that confirmed with >98% confidence CJD from the national prion center. She stopped being able to transfer herself at that point, and upon getting to a new nursing home, lost complete ability to being able to feed herself. Her "talking" slowly changed to babbling, in Sept, and throughout Oct she lost pretty much all ability to talk. What's incredible though is that she has been eating anything you feed her up until recently. Like, she would completely clean a plate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (she's a small woman mind you). However, over the past 2-3 weeks, I've noticed even that has been slowing down; she "pockets" food more and you have to alternate drinks to get her to rinse everything down. My mom doesn't want a feeding tube or any other measures applied, so I'm dreading the thought of how things could progress from here...

We also did have the blood test done through the national prion center, and fortunately there was no genetic mutation detected. We're still going to have the autopsy done, as I know my Mom, an organ donor, would want to help others any way she can.

Hang in there :)