Biography
John Sandblom, one of two DAI inaugural co-chairs, has lived in central Iowa, US all his life except for college which was eastern Iowa at the University of Iowa. He spent the majority of his working life in business-to-business sales, first print advertising followed by television advertising and then telecommunications sales.
He was diagnosed with Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) at the age of 48 in 2007, by a gerontologist that specialized in dementia. This was the same physician that diagnosed his father with Alzheimer’s disease in his early 70’s. In 2009, John went back through the complete diagnosis process again, where he was told it was medically undeniable that he had dementia, but they could not tell him what type of dementia because his scans were so atypical. However, they felt confident from family history that he had the same type of dementia as his father.
In November of 2011 he received the complete research autopsy done on his father’s brain. It showed he died of Alzheimer’s Disease. Since his father’s autopsy confirmed of Alzheimer’s Disease, it has since been believed that John has the same type of dementia as his father and his diagnosis was changed to atypical young onset Alzheimer’s Disease.
John works at the local, regional, state and international levels now to advocate for people with dementia. He also started a support group comprised solely of people living with dementia, which is a wonderful supportive group and the achievement in helping others with dementia that he is most proud.