Tag Archives: Alzheimer’s disease

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Alzheimer's disease: Enemy No. 1

Several hundred Amarillo residents are going for a walk Saturday.

It’s an annual event here, as it is in communities all across the country. They’ll walk to call attention to Alzheimer’s disease. I won’t be among them that day, as I’ll be working.

However, my heart is with them. All of them. I want them to raise money and to keep raising money to fight a killer disease with which my family and I have intimate knowledge.

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Thirty years ago this week, my dear mother died quietly in her sleep. Her death certificate lists pneumonia as the cause of her death.

Alzheimer’s disease was the real culprit.

Mom was 61. She’d been in failing health for several years. A doctor diagnosed her officially with Alzheimer’s disease only four years earlier but in reality she’d been exhibiting symptoms for years prior to that diagnosis.

Her behavior was changing. She was losing her cognitive skill. She lost them one at a time. The ability to sign her own name. The ability to drive a car. She couldn’t cook meals. Eventually she couldn’t bathe herself. She couldn’t dress herself. Near the end she couldn’t speak and was reduced to making strange murmuring noises.

Those who have witnessed their loved ones vanish in this manner before their eyes understand this fundamental truth about Alzheimer’s disease: It afflicts the caregiver far more than the patient. Mom was unaware of her surroundings, of those who loved her. She didn’t know when she lapsed in and out of lucidity. But we knew it. It broke our hearts.

Alzheimer’s disease hasn’t captured the public’s imagination the way, say, AIDS or various forms of cancer have gobbled up so much of the world’s attention. Why? I guess it’s because its victims generally are older and that its not the result of unhealthy behavior. It strikes people without warning or cause.

It struck Mom that way, just as it strikes those who’ve been diagnosed with this merciless, cruel disease.

Our nation is aging. That means more Americans will suffer from this terrible affliction.

My wish — as always — is that modern medicine can find a cure, a vaccine to eradicate Alzheimer’s disease.

The Saturday walk at Sam Houston Park will raise money toward that end.

My prayer today is that the money raised will put researchers over the top in their hunt for a cure that ends the scourge of Alzheimer’s disease.

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Depression takes center stage

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When an iconic artist and performer takes his own life at a time when he ought to be on top of the world, well, then you start examining the demons that drove him to that tragic end.

Robin Williams’s apparent suicide Monday has brought depression to the public fore.

As it should.

http://movies.msn.com/movies/article.aspx?news=881808

Williams was one of the world’s most dynamic entertainers. His talent was seemingly without limits. His comic genius sprang from a mind with an incalculable amount of material rolling around in it, which he unleashed with hysterical fury almost without warning.

He made people laugh to the point of crying.

Williams had his demons. They involved alcoholism and drug abuse. They cost him at least one marriage, maybe more.

Internationally acclaimed entertainers, superstars and assorted celebrities have left us from all manner of illness: AIDS, Alzheimer’s, various forms of cancer.

Yes, depression is a killer, too.

Robin Williams’s tragic end will bring this disease to our national attention.

Let’s have this discussion as we mourn our national loss.

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Alzheimer's brings the long goodbye

The Summer Solstice — the longest day of the year — has arrived in the northern half of Planet Earth.

The longest day also has another meaning for those with intimate knowledge of a deadly disease that destroys the human brain and turns its victims into shells of who they once were.

It’s called Alzheimer’s disease, named for Alois Alzheimer who first diagnosed the disease in the early 20th century. The longest day is meant to characterize how time no longer is relevant to Alzheimer’s patients. Days turn into nights, and vice versa. It all runs together for these people — and often for those who care for them.

The Summer Solstice is going to bring in a lot of public ceremonies around the country today as we celebrate National Alzheimer’s Month. It’s a symbolic time to commemorate this disease.

I have some knowledge of how it ravages families.

My mother died in 1984. She was diagnosed officially in the spring of 1980, but the blunt reality is that she showed symptoms long before the neurologist delivered the grim news to us.

The doctor was blunt. There’s no cure. There’s no way to identify the disease, he said, other than to eliminate every other pathological reason. It’s terminal, he said. Your mother will die from it eventually, he added.

We tried our best to care for her. Dad did his best as well, until he met his own untimely death in September 1980.

A month is hardly enough time to commemorate this disease. It should be on-going. It afflicts many millions of Americans that number is growing as the median age of this country increases. Do we have all-star concerts with rock stars, film icons, mega-rich philanthropists calling national attention to this disease? No.

It’s not a “sexy” disease the way, say, AIDS became more than three decades ago.

Alzheimer’s disease afflicts old people — mostly. Mom wasn’t old by any stretch of the imagination when the first symptoms presented themselves. I cannot recall precisely when we noticed changes in behavior or when she made statements that didn’t quite compute.

When the end came, she was just 61, which by my way of thinking is getting younger all the time.

It’s not pretty. In fact, it’s heartbreaking in the extreme to watch your loved one slip farther away.

So, enjoy the Summer Solstice, this first day of summer.

While doing so, give some thought to those you may have lost to Alzheimer’s disease or perhaps say a prayer for someone who’s caring for a loved one gripped by this tragic ailment.

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Comedic actor fights for serious cause

First, allow me this acknowledgment.

I know little about Seth Rogen’s professional life, other than he’s a comedic actor who starred in the film “Knocked Up.”

After Wednesday, though, I now perceive him as a courageous young man who’s trying to raise awareness of an affliction with which my family and I have intimate knowledge: Alzheimer’s disease.

Rogen sat before a U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday and told a heartbreaking story of his mother-in-law.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/seth-rogen-promotes-alzheimer-awareness-article-1.1703206

She’s now in her early 60s. Rogen’s mother-in-law cannot speak; she cannot feed or bathe herself; she barely can walk and is confined mostly to a wheelchair; she doesn’t recognize anyone outwardly. She was diagnosed about seven years ago — when she was just 55 — with early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Rogen is trying to raise awareness and I must presume raise the interest of lawmakers who control the federal purse to put more money into Alzheimer’s research. He’s founded an organization, Hilarity for Charity, to help educate young Americans about the disease.

Oh, brother, I feel the young man’s pain.

As he spoke to the mostly empty chairs that should have been filled by senators, Rogen’s testimony reminded me of my own late mother’s affliction. She died in 1984 at the age of 61. A doctor issued an official diagnosis of her condition in 1980, but in truth she had been showing signs of profound personality change for years prior to that.

We watched her disappear before our eyes. Her body was present, but the woman we knew was long gone. At the end, she couldn’t speak or feed herself or bathe — just like Seth Rogen’s mother-in-law.

My heart hurt listening to him.

Later that evening, on Chris Matthews’s cable talk show “Hardball,” Rogen took note of the shameful lack of attention given by the committee members. Only two of them attended the entire hearing: Democratic chairman Tom Harken of Iowa and Republican ranking member Jerry Moran of Kansas.

Rogen didn’t express outward anger at the lack of attendance by the rest of the panel. I’ll express it for him.

It is shameful that the committee didn’t bother to listen to all that Rogen had to tell them. They needed to be there, even if they had heard it all before. They needed to hear the testimony of someone who’s emotional heartache is as real as it gets — as he is speaking for millions of other Americans who have gone through, or who are going through right now, the agony of watching a loved one waste away.

Alzheimer’s disease afflicts roughly 5 million Americans. The reality, though, is that it causes pain to many times more than that number. It inflicts pain on family members who have to endure what Seth Rogan and his wife are experiencing. Those numbers will climb as the nation continues to age and as more Americans fall victim to Alzheimer’s cruelty.

I hope Rogen keeps up the fight. He is delivering an important message that needs to be heard.