Battling Alzheimer

Since I come from a family of lawyers and politicians, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that my grandmother was the center of much debate. We tend to think that debate actually solves problems, even incurable, terminal diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease. One of her children told me that having my motives constantly questioned would keep me on my toes so I could offer my grandmother better care. Actually, she went beyond questioning - she called the Department of Elderly Services a few times to investigate us.

If it took thirty years, in essence, to settle my great-grandparents’ estate, it should come as no surprise that we spent twenty years deciding where my grandmother should live. Of course, she pretty much ignored everything we said (if she could hear it at all) but it made us feel better.

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Alzheimer’s disease is such a hot topic, it’s hard to keep up with everything that is being said about it. Here are some blog posts and articles that you may have missed earlier this month.

The February 7 issue of Nature, quoted by HealthCentral, reports that amyloid plaques, considered the main sign of AD, can form in one day in laboratory mice. At least one doctor cautions that, despite the headlines, this doesn’t mean that AD can form in one day. AD develops more slowly. The study also found that soon after the plaque appeared, specialized cells called microglia appeared. Doctors wonder if microglia might actually fight the growth of plaque.

The Alzheimer’s Association is reaching out to African-Americans, who are more susceptible to high blood pressure, diabetes, strokes and heart disease, problems that have been linked to increased Alzheimer’s symptoms. They offering a Healthy Heart and Brain Kit. Some assembly required?

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Alzheimer’s disease takes away language in pieces, not all at once. You may think of people with that disease as being mute, but in the early stages, many people with Alzheimer’s are not mute at all. For some, their gift of gab can help reassure themselves and others that they aren’t quite gone.

In my grandmother’s case, I’m not sure how much to attribute her unusual language to the disease. I think she always used unusual, colorful language. I know my mother always did. I know the uncles/poets in the family always have. It’s hard to get a straight answer out of them sometimes.

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I find such help from Kris’s blog Dealing with Alzheimer’s, because she can describe so clearly what it’s like to have it, beginning in her 40s. After three years of being turned down, Social Security finally granted her disability benefits. When she first began her blog in 2004, she was still working full-time, but now she spends time as a member of the Early Stage Advisory Group and makes handmade cards, and does other things that a wife and mother (and sports fan) like to do.

Kris says:

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I shouldn’t be surprised by this: according to Alzheimer’s and Dementia, cognitive impairment (such as dementia) is affecting a smaller percentage of elderly Americans today that it did fifteen years ago. HealthCentral quotes the study as saying that these problem affected from 12.2 percent in 1993 and 8.7 percent in 2002.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease isn’t increasing. We’re still facing a coming Alzheimer’s epidemic as more people live long enough to show the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. But of those who live long, fewer of them are having problems with their memory.

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You can’t always trust the headlines. Most journalists summarized the February 7 issue of Nature, quoted by HealthCentral, as a report that amyloid plaques, considered the main sign of Alzheimer’s disease, can form in one day in laboratory mice. That was interesting, That attracted the readers. That frightened many readers. It wasn’t the whole story.

According to Scientific American, the real story may be the opposite of what many readers expected. The real story revolves, in part, around the question, “Does amyloid plaque cause Alzheimer’s disease? Or does Alzheimer’s disease cause amyloid plaque?”

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The past few days, I keep coming up with ways of coping with Alzheimer’s disease that depend on already having a healthy relationship with the person who has it. If you never had enough respect for that person, or if they never had much respect for you, or if that respect was based on power or abilities that they lack now, that may cause problems with your relationship now. Alzheimer’s may not cause changes in the moral character of the person with the disease. If you’re the loved one of someone with Alzheimer’s, I guess it’s up to you whether it causes changes in your character, for good or for bad.

Perhaps no quality is as important for someone with Alzheimer’s than trust. It’s hard to feel secure in a world that you can’t remember. You need to have someone or something to trust in if you can’t remember where you are, what you’re supposed to be doing, what happened to important people or things.

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Enough people have trouble talking with their grandmothers - or their mothers. Sometimes they don’t know what to talk about, other times they don’t want to talk about the same things you want to talk about. If their grandmothers or mothers also have Alzheimer’s disease, that doesn’t help the situation.

When you carry on a conversation with someone with Alzheimer’s, you can count on them to repeat themselves and to say some things that you may not agree with. “I don’t remember anything they’re talking about. I thought they were the one with the memory problems, not me,” you mutter to yourself.

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When you discover that something is missing from the place where you left it, what do you assume? Most people assume that somebody else moved it. That’s not my first response. My first response is to ask myself if I’m sure that’s where I really left it. I forget things. I know that. I’m not the only one who does it. Time management experts will smile knowingly. Enough people routinely find things by systematically looking in all the usual places that the time management experts can refer me to their handout on the subject.

But what if you discover that nothing is where you left? What if everything has been moved, including yourself? What if you don’t remember how you got where you are, but nobody will let you leave? That’s the common plight of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

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We don’t call Alzheimer’s disease “the Monster” for nothing. As recent blog posts suggest, Alzheimer’s terrifies many people. For some, any possible advance in research and treatment is grasped like a straw, or a lifeline. For others, Alzheimer’s disease is a daily, grinding burden as they care for a loved one, or sometimes, face it themselves. For still others, dementia causes them to look at life and their own health in a new way.

We think of Alzheimer’s disease as something that causes people to forget, but for the Memory Bridge project, it’s a call to remember and to bring generations closer. They’ve developed interview questions that are used for the Library of Congress’s Veterans History Project, a school curriculum, and a highly-recommended documentary.

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