What is CJD?  CJD stands for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a rare prion disease that affects the brain.  Our nightmare began in 2020 when my father began exhibiting strange behavior.  Due to his age and stress level associated with Covid 19 we just thought it was either early signs of Dymentia or excessive amounts of stress and anxiety.  Let me just say that my father was still working full-time, driving, and doing normal everyday things until one day he came home and handed the keys to my mom and said I'm done driving and working.  Please hide the keys.  This was so out of character and alarming.  After getting no answers from our primary we decided to change doctors and do some routine tests.  At this point signs of dementia were beginning to surface and insomnia was happening more often.  This quickly progressed to being off balance and paranoia and bizarre conversations and comments.  Everything on the TV became his reality so we monitored what he was watching.  No politics, no news, no crime shows, nothing controversial.  For about 6 weeks his symptoms progressed from working and driving to being in a wheelchair and not knowing reality and only sleeping in between bites of food.  Back and forth to the doctors for follow ups, medication for anxiety, MRI, Catscan, and a couple emergency room visits.  Finally the last hospital visit a Neurologist came in his room and casually diagnosed him with CJD.  I asked, what is that?  She said a very rare, 1 in a million prion disease that affects the brain and has no cure!  As you can imagine I was dumbfounded and really didn't believe it.  Especially after she said it could have come from his trips to the UK back in the late 80's when Mad Cow Disease was prevalent.  Still not understanding nor believing this we continued with more tests.  The only way to diagnose this was with an MRI, Spinal Test, or brain biopsy.  At this point he had been in the hospital for over a week and experiencing violent jerky movements.  The spinal test was attempted 3 times.  The third was done by the neurologist bedside with other doctors talking him through it and holding him still.  Keep in mind he was not understanding much at this point but somehow he trusted the doctors enough to let them perform this test.  Two weeks now in the hospital and we were now talking about Hospice.  This was the end of October 2020 and still dealing with Covid rules so putting him in a nursing home was unthinkable.  We bought ourselves a couple days at the hospital and turned my parents house into a Hospice environment.  We met with a local agency and arranged care and gathered close family to take shifts to fill the gaps.  We brought him home completely shell shocked and numb at what the last 6 weeks had entailed.  He came home on November 1, 2020 and died on November 3, 2020.  By the way, the test results for the spinal test still hadn't come back so we still had no definitive answer on what he had but could only go by all the symptoms and the expertise of the Neurologist.  Later I found more information online with the CJD Foundation along with a Facebook Group called CJD Family.  I could not believe the amount of people all over the world experiencing exactly what we had.  One in a Million?  Really?  So on October 2, 2021 there is a Walk to raise awareness and funds for the foundation to help educate not only people like us but the doctors who have never seen this before and calling it Dymentia.  Even the Neurologist said this was his second case in all his years of practice.  I believe there are more cases and wrong diagnosis.  Please help me reach my goal and help raise awareness for CJD!