I think its so individual and dependent on the stage of the illness AND
what the person did/does for a living, that you are not going to find
much.

Obviously, there are some large employers, such as mine, who have good
insurance for employees who develop long term disabilities. For my
company, its cheaper for the company to find some form of employment
for them than have them sit home especially if they want to work - its
better for everyone to keep someone working - but we're a big firm with
all kinds of jobs. We have company rehab specialists whose job it is to
figure out accomodated employment for people with disabilities (for
example, they may find people with physical injuries desk jobs, send
them for retraining, figure out ways to adapt the jobs with specialized
equipment, etc. I work for a very large utility company, and
traditionally, many men who could not longer do heavy tradeswork ended
up as dispatchers, meter readers, schedulers etc. One of my staff is a
terrific guy who lost both arms above the elbow in a terrible
electrical accident about 15 years ago (he was a young lineman at the
time) and he currently works for my group as an environmental
technician.

That scenario isn't possible for many companies, and just not workable
for small ones. Its also a huge problem for someone with AD who may not
be able to learn new skills, even simple ones. If your husband made his
living with his brain in a job that required a lot of thinking,
accuracy, speed, etc. he's in trouble a lot sooner than someone who
does a physical job like a tradesman who could work alongside someone
who could prompt them with tasks, or someone who has  repetitive job
where the prompts are kind of inherant (i.e. here comes another car
down the assembly line and my job is to tighten the wheel nuts on every
drivers side wheel.

There was an article recently in the paper about an elderly woman with
who continued to work at a fast food restaurant long into her
Alzheimer's. I think she'd just done it so long prior to getting AD,
that it was second nature. The work was relatively simple, repetitive
and she was probably on auto-pilot.

M