IN THE END IT’S A GIFT!

I read a posting on Bob DeMarco’s Alzheimer’s Reading Room the reading of which I recommend. I have posted it on my Archive for quick access however follow the Reading Room it is worth it. Both links are hypertext’d. The article in the archive is entitled: Loneliness and the Long Distance Runner

Bob talks of the joy of his world as a caretaker who left Wall Street to care for his mother stricken with our disease. He has been doing that for some time and has withdrawn from a successful career and so many of his work and social acquaintances. Dedication, concentration and geographical separation have produced this which could be considered a rather lonely plight.

His article posted is about how it is not!

His article posted is about how it is more. As such it is satisfying. Above all it is full!

How can that be?

Yesterday in one of my AA Day Books I read the following.

We grow in time to trust the future for our answers
- Ruth Benedict

When we first started in recovery, we approached it like we did our codependent and addictive behaviors, wanting to possess it all quickly and totally - and to do it right. Some of us thought we could learn all we needed to know about recovery in a few weeks. In living with this program, we begin to see we are engaged in a lifelong process. We are in a maturing process and this program is our guide. We can't rush it or move on to the next stage too soon. An apple tree does not blossom in the fall, and we do not expect the newly forming apples to ripen before they've grown.

Our existence in this world is like walking through the woods on a rambling path. We can only see as far ahead as the next bend. We no longer seek some big moment when we finally get the outcome or a "cure" for life's experiences. The experience along the way is all we need.

Today, I will think about the tasks and rewards of this day and trust the future for what is unanswered.

This was a start to the answer of the question: How can that be?

Always I have in life, in whatever stage, tried to do it right. I followed what guide posts there were and endeavored at what I was doing, always wanting to get it right. I knew try as I did, success as there was, it always fell short. It ended with an unfulfilled void. Something unknown was missing.

I see the answer to the void that I repeatedly ended up with explained in the forgoing reading, viz: "we are engaged in a lifelong process... like walking through the woods on a rambling path. We can only see as far ahead as the next bend...The experience along the way is all we need."

As I entered my senior years, (became an old fart) I started to see I had more answers then questions. The answers came, not from success, but from failures, reverses and calamities. Soon I started to get an inkling of “What it is all About!”

AD was my final indignity, my final catastrophe. For all that went before I was able to see promptly AD like so many past experiences was opportunity, in fact blessing, forcing me to give, to share, to concentrate on others to survive this too.

In this acceptance I found peace, fulfillment and a sense finally, this is my opportunity to make a difference with my life.

Having lived the successes (of which there were many); having lived the happiness I had (of which there was much); having endured the failures and painful events (which also counted up); I came to know they were all secondary. AD was my main event.

My comment left with Bob’s Post is as follows:

My name is Mike Donohue. I am an Alzheimer's Afflicted. I am alone a lot but I am not lonely. I have spent a life time trying to do what it was I was supposed to do. When I became Alzheimer's Disease (AD) Afflicted I no longer had any thing left I was supposed to do.

AD took that all away. Was this a loss? I thought it would be. I then learned I was wrong. It was a relief. I no longer had all those masters to serve.

What masters you ask? First it was my parents, then my teachers, then myself . I added a wife, children, job, associates and friends then it was clients of mine, judges, other lawyers, it just didn't stop. The masters never quit adding on, I could never do enough for them.

My worst master was myself. As I went along serving on the levels to which I aspired I recognized what I had become defined. I was a husband, father, lawyer, committed community member, co-worker, friend, with expectations about me. Having recognized this I strove so hard to be just that and do it well.

I was so tired when life discharged me, mustered me out, said "You have AD leave these halls and go!"

My God what an order, out the door, alone, uncared for by the vast community I had served so well.

My wife understood, she undertook the care of me. Blessed Be her love and just her! My children kind of figured it out, gave it what understanding they were able to come up with. Friends stayed, new associates came, Nonetheless the quality of all of it degraded horribly.

Alone is what I was, a shell of what I was. This is all that was left. That was true until I knew what it was I should do. I had a disease I did not want. I had a disease that shunned me into oblivion because it was feared and misunderstood.

No one knew there is life after Alzheimer's. I learned this and decided I could share this because I could still think, could still read, could still speak, could in fact speak out! I decided to do just that. I would make my disease worth having hate it as I did.

I started advocating for AD, writing about and sharing my experience of it. I want people to know, "Having it is not near so bad as worrying about getting it!" What a paradox!

Bob, in your article to which I make this comment you express precisely that which I have learned. Like you I am not lonely. My disease is the gift of my Higher Power, given me to do something good with it. Your mother, your commitment, these are your gifts. Your care for her and this wonderful column you produce are not only a testament to her but a blessing to all of us. Thank you, Mike Donohue

ONE MORE TOOL TO STAY OUTSIDE "THE HOME DOOR"!

Yesterday I talked about art. If I had any experience with music I would talk about that. Considering most of my loved ones and associates prefer something other than classical or new age music I love, I will leave music to someone else.

Just this thought! What is it about classical music that has survived and still has a following now four centuries later? Is it the mathematics? Is it about how it resonates creatively? Is it The Hive that in college in the ‘50’s said that was cool and sophisticated?

Today my discussion deals with another tool having to do with the stimulating the mind to simply think and finding a fulfilling activity for doing that.

Now those of us from the ‘50’s, ‘60’s and ‘70’s are looking around not for what is cool but what is capable of helping us survive. We need to find something to help the brain to keep up with the body.

To do so we need to develop some strategies. We need to do this particularly because the Alzheimer’s Disease, (AD) supporting groups and government are centering their efforts in accumulating funds to find a drug cure.

To take care of ourselves, those of us like me with AD, or others with other forms of dementia and overall slowness, the Mantra is: “eat right, exercise daily, stimulate with intellectual and creative activity”. Add to that what ever medication is working for you and don’t hold your breath expecting a cure anytime soon short of croaking!

Your primary task if you choose to accept it is to do everything you can to survive. Another tool for this is talked about by Paula Span in her column “The New Old Age” in the 1-26 issue of the NYT

You can find it there as well as on my archive entitled “Schooling the Aging Brain” click on the hypertext title to go there.

Also, follow the NYT New Old Age the link to which I have hypertext’d as well. It is so worth following! It consistently contains good stuff!

Span’s article speaks for itself needing no comment from me.

If comment there be it is this: How can we transfer some of the energy concentrating on raising money to help the poor pharmaceutical companies fund a cure, and direct it into strategies for finding care. It as is so sorely needed and offers so much potential for cutting the cost of caring for this rotten disease!

CAN’T SAY ENOUGH ABOUT THE CREATIVE ARTS!

I sit by my window and draw, color and enhance pictures with no end of enjoyment. I wonder, where did I find this well of creativity?

I was a good lawyer, handled detail, strategy, tactics, study, research, so many technical facets and activities that go into being a lawyer. I couldn’t sing, draw, I didn’t have the patience that is needed for creativity. My wife was convinced I was color blind or demented when it came to my choice of clothing and appointment. If it wasn’t brown beige or green I wouldn’t use it.

Then came AD. Afterward came a surprising interest in art. Where did this come from? Does the right brain, the creative side, supplement those parts of the mechanical left brain that is in the process of damaging?

I do not know. I do know in my self. I do know from what I read and see. Exercising creativity is both very important and helpful for folks afflicted with AD.

Bob DeMarco supplemented an article written earlier entitled: "I Remember Better When I Paint: Treating Alzheimer's through the Creative Arts" It appears in his Blog: Alzheimer’s Reading Room, as does the previous blog which this article hypertexts you to. You will find both this article and the original on my archive too: I remember when I paint I and I remember when I paint II in my archive. Click on any of the hypertext and it will take you.

Look at my recent post: It's in Creativity them AD folks Survive, Man!

To catch further interest and show you more of what I do take a look at the two pictures I just did that follow:

THE HIVE MIND RULES!

Two articles grabbed my attention this morning, both in the Washington Post. I have posted each in my Archive:

• From John Edwards, lessons on celebrity and politics
• Davos: What's the point?

Both speak loudly of our culture, more loudly about our decision making and mind-think!

Government is a product of evolution formed over time and from time to time, by man, making a choice to come out of the cave and live with others. Its purpose is balance. The intent is to find equilibrium between man’s individual needs and group needs.

Man’s first need is to care for him/herself. This demands complete freedom. That freedom starts to erode as man finds love, lives with those that he/she love, reproduces and soon is in family.

Man also learns quickly to be in the cave, alone, self sufficient, this is not enough. There is a primeval need to venture out. He/She needs to live with others. This involves his/her relinquishing even more individual freedom in order to gain benefits provided by being of a group.

The relinquishment of this freedom is balanced by the assurance that the action of the group will do no more than serve the common good. When forthrightly serving the common good the needs of the group supersede the needs of the individual. The means to accomplish this end we form a government of what ever serves and fits the group.

This is the basic primer on civics for the day.

Looking at its application and fulfillment of our needs in this day and for whatever our future may require I ask: What are thewe needs? Where will they be satisfied in the best most responsible way?

Applying this to myself: What I can’t do I need to seek elsewhere. My first source: My loved ones. Will that be enough? Unfortunately: Nope! Where else do I go?

And there lies the Rub!!!

Our only resource beyond our own is charity, religious, benevolent, cooperative resources is Government.

There lies the second Rub!!!

The Government has lost its way. It is not capable of providing for its initial purpose, that is, to care for us when there is no other competent source to do the job.

I AM A MIDDLE CLASS AMERICAN WHO HAS SAVED FOR THE RETIREMENT OF MY WIFE AND ME AND CANNOT AFFORD TO HAVE THE ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE (AD) THAT I DO. IF I REQUIRE HOME CARE, ASSISTED LIVING CARE OR NURSING HOME CARE AS IT NOW EXISTS THE ESTATE OF MY WIFE AND ME IS AT RISK OF BEING DRAINED HAVING TO PAY FOR THE CARE LEAVING NOT ENOUGH FOR THE SURVIVOR OF US TO CONTINUE LIVING IN RETIREMENT UNABLE TO WORK FOR A LIVING.

There was the poor house, there was Old Age Assistance; There was the County, Grants in Aid, and, oh yes, once there was Welfare! NOW THERE IS NOT! What’s left is subsidized housing if any there be and good quality dog food. This is Senior Life in the Fast Lane!

I haven’t researched available welfare in 2010; there might be something for seniors finding themselves drained and without. Of course if I am in the Home once all of our money is gone I can then qualify for Government Assistance so I can die in a bed, but what does my spouse do when the money is gone and she is does not qualify for The Home.

Don’t look to Government, they can’t, they won’t, they can’t get it together. Need I say more than look what happened to Health Care?

There are a lot of reasons for why government can’t when it should and there is probably no other that can and will do it.

We are led by leaders who have qualified on platforms the same as Edward’s, that platform of gossamer that carried him so far, even dangerously close. How can this happen in this age of more information than we know what to do with.

Davos is the metaphor of our style of management and decision making. The first of the snippets about Davis is written by David Rothkoph, the author of the insightful book The Superclass which is worth everyone’s read. In it he talks about Davos, what it is, who is there and what they do. In the article part today in the Post he talks about the quality of it all. That part is pretty scary!

It is scary because it succinctly identifies the overall problem.

What is the problem? HIVE MIND!

Too often, at all levels of the groups in which we function our individual creativity has no place, our individual judgment has no acceptance, decisions are made by whoever is in charge and ekes down to all, unspoken, non the less told in that method known as : “That’s the Way We Do Things!”

We learn it in high school and earlier. Having learned “The Way” we take a step beyond what we have sensibly given away to successfully come out of the cave. We have ceded our individual decision making to a blind trust in the decisions of the group, of the HIIVE.

The decision makers for our group are whoever become the coolest in the ranks. How do they become the coolest? Appearance! What they appear to be based on a multitude of factors not any of them necessarily associated with how smart they are, what good judgment they have, what commitment to the common good they profess. It is the ones the fit in the best, liked the best, and everyone says they are the best. This makes them the best.

That is Davos, that is Edwards, that is all of it folks. Republicans aren’t thinking, they are adhering to party dictate. Democrats are wussing, afraid that if they take a stand they won’t get re-elected. Then there is Obama. He sure looked good. Is he????

The Oligarchy is Out of the Closet!

I had a nice warm sunny time in the Caymans for a week. I am now back facing winter. While I was gone two significant political events occurred:

1. The Fiasco in Massachusetts.
2. The Perfidious Decision of the Supreme Court throwing out our attempts to control spending on campaigns.

What does all of this mean? It started with Reagan, codified by Bush 2, evident now as its reality sets in. The Oligarchs are out of the closet! The Oligarchs are in charge!

Oligarchy has long been a word used in political reference to the state of government described in dictionaries as follows:

A form of government in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique; government by the few.

For 30 years it has been working towards this. Last week it became evident it has become that.

Oligarch has become a word too often associated with current Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union. I am not talking about the Russian Mafia, or the power moguls found and described as being in Russia.

Oligarchy has been around a long time and in the U.S. it is here again!

What to do?

I am tired of fighting, “I Give Up!” As I have learned with Alcoholism, relearned with AD, when it is and there is nothing you can do about it: “Accept it and Make the Best of It.” I honestly believe we are at the point of having to do just that.

We need to start at home and then stay at home. “Help one person you help the world” they say. This we can yet do and can always do. We also better do, cuz, it ain’t gonna be done if we don’t.

Nicholas Kristof had a startling column in the NYT yesterday. I have posted it in my archive. The name of it is: What Could You Live Without? Click on it to read it. In essence he tells us “Sell the House and give half away.”

Is this scary or what. I am not going to do this; my current needs are too tied up in our house. Between aging and safety we are not in a position to do this in any practicable way. Not doing this does not mean there are not other things we can do.

Time and again I have learned accumulation of things does not bring happiness. At best it brings dedication and distraction. My greatest joy is writing and sharing my experience toughing it out with AD. This is my first step in giving away the house.

I am dedicated and committed to the proposition of helping others to relieve their suffering.

The second and third posting I have made today in my archive have to do with the Massachusetts Mess and the Gridlock produced by our conflicted Government Process. It just doesn’t seem able to get any better.

In the last of the three postings in my Archive today: After the Massachusetts Massacre, Frank Rich, in the NYT talks about the overall mess in Washington and makes the call for something to be done by the current administration.

Looking at what needs to be done and hasn’t gotten close to getting done I do not have any great measure of hope anything will be done. Everything is locked up by “The Way We Do Things” and the politicians already bought and paid for by the Oligarchy.

The door was opened to the control exercised by the lobbyists representing the power of global corporations. I don’t see how it can be closed. We gave our franchise away; we are no longer a Democracy. We are “let to eat cake” watching the news heads tell us what to think and then turning to “Reality Shows” instead of taking in the actuality in which we live.

The final posting The Other Health Care Crisis -- America's Elderly is by Martha Stewart making excellent points.

She points to the needs of the aging population which is not being met and now will certainly not be met with the apparent demise of Health Care Reform and capitulation to the Oligarchy.

Government isn’t doing, Government won’t do, and we must do it ourselves. We are faced with a calamity in the making exacerbated by the burgeoning epidemic of AD now in its early stage.

With AD there are remedies available to us. The first is doing all that is possible and necessary to keep folks in the Early Stage of AD where they remain able to stay at home with minimal care.

It is important that we stay at home and minimize our need of care to save the system the cost of our institutionalization. If our care can be limited saving everyone, particularly our loving caretakers, this is service to the overall community.

When we are in need of the Home, whether Nursing, Assisted Living, Day Care, The lower the level providing it the better everyone is off. As it is currently, the large homogenized institutions providing it are ineffectual at best and no more than profit providers for the fat cats putting them in play with the backing of Government which does for them and not for us.

If enough Churches, Mosques, Synagogues, Service Organizations, etc. set up housing cottage style pooling the services needed by the afflicted, run autonomously and cooperatively this could fill the huge black hole Government has allowed to form.

To make the best of it we need to quit depending on Government, quit putting all of our efforts and bucks into finding the cure, and start addressing what needs to be done.

It is up to us, NO OTHER!!!!

I'm Outta Here!

I will be out for a week lallygagging in the Cayman's. To ensure I do nothing but I am leaving my laptop at home.

Be back posting in a week.

It's in Creativity them AD folks Survive, Man!

Said before, I’ll say it again! With this disease, at least with me, I have tapped a well of creativity I had no idea about. I could always write creatively. I believed I was creative in my professional skills as a trial lawyer, particularly able to balance matters global and focal equally well. Although I have loved music, listened, enjoyed, I have had absolutely no talent beyond my taste.

I could have said the same about art were it not for a few incidents that changed my view about myself in that regard. I found I could draw in a rudimentary fashion and loved apply color to it. From this I realized I might have a knack for expression. What follows is an illustration of some of the work I have done.

I draw in part, color in part and scan and enhance with my computer in bigger part. This produced the following:

Flowers of Provence Series:


At the Minneapolis Arboretum:









Study of a Vu at Arboretum





Misc:







My purpose in showing these pictures is to show what can be done. Far more than that it shows as one whose paradigm has shifted with AD you can still use your time enjoyably. I get a royal kick out of art work.






My artwork went into full swing after writing a children’s book for my grandchildren. To publish it the art had to be my own. I went to work experimenting how a non-artist might illustrate. The writing I was able to do, illustrating I learned to do.

This writing has now gotten two books published, both available at Amazon.com, The second of the two, fully illustrated by me! The Swampgoat.

The second book, From AA to AD, A Wistful Travelogue is more prose than illustration, nonetheless something that couldn’t have happened had AD not happened to me.


I have seen art programs in development. One is at Minneapolis’s Institute of Art. A second at Walker Art Center. At MIA (Mpls Inst) specific tours are provided for AD folks in parts with plenty of education on each piece of art presented. These are so important to us and for us.

Walker Art is doing one better, although still in development, adding a hands-on workshop in a do-it-yourself lab they have.

I tend to be a self starter, have always been, thank god that remains. Not everyone else is. AD is an equal opportunity employer. Some of our folks need help getting started.

Getting started then doing can provide so much for those of us afflicted by this terrible disease. It adds to our quality of life and has the capacity to hold us in our functional period longer.

It is nice seeing this topic discussed, written about and presented in the media so much more now. I am posting an article on this topic that ran on The Alzheimer’s Reading Room. It can be read by clicking on the Reading Room which is in hypertext or on the name of the article I REMEMBER PEST WHEN I PAINT which I have in hypertext to take you to my archive.

For Too Long And With Too Much Emphasis, Finding The Cure Has Been Oversold!

I have contended repeatedly on this Blog that we should start to concentrate at least half our effort on Finding Better Care, Improving the Quality of Care, Minimizing the Cost of Care as Finding the Cure. Look at the chronology of essays on the left hand column of this Blog. It has been an issue I have consistently raised here in the past.

I have suggested this in numerous essays about:

• The need to give equal emphasis to care as cure.

• I have been disturbed with the over-concentration on raising money when Cost of Care is so critically confiscatory to so many of us affected by thi
s disease.
• When Quality of Care too often is consistently substandard.

• I have bemusedly wondered could this be just another of the silent agendas in misguided effort promoted by the drug industry duping the groups purportedly supporting those affected by AD.

So little is being done to alleviate the tragedy to those affected by this disease as its occurrence is escalating into epidemic size!

They say “Let’s get a cure!” Too often this is the only effort seen in organized activity supporting AD. This is no help for me and all the rest of us affected or afflicted. Where are there national, regional and local efforts to help people cope?

To help people work at remaining functional in the myriad programs that could be made available and save money in the long run.

Where does one with AD go? Going to the Doctor and getting told “Take this and call me in a year!” That is just not skinning it!

Is a cure possible? I’ll let you know should they find one. Until then? They say they are looking in all the right places, doing the right things, certainly sooner of later something will stick to the wall!

Look at all of the other disingenuous promotions by the Pharmaceutical Industry. Every where you look they seem to be taking the public to their personal advantage, all for profit. I wonder if this effort is but one more ploy. I wonder if success is stymied by their need to keep shuffling testing to fund their infrastructure, lobbying, advertising, and profit production.

Why are all of the efforts caught in the trap “we need to raise more money, we need to find the cure?” There are so many other things needed more.

I have posted an article in my Archive entitled Alzheimer's Research: Starting Over which was carried on an excellent Blog: The Tangled Neuron. It is worth reading.

We could be found to be going on so many wrong paths. There is no real coordination of effort, classification or programs to help. There is little than money going into research and nothing coming out!

TO DRIVE OR NOT TO DRIVE, THAT IS THE VEXING QUESTION

Bob DeMarco ran a post on his Blog today Alzheimer’s Reading Room entitled

Didn't stop "because I just like to drive" -- Subscribers Get Rich?

This can be read on my Archive or on the Reading Room Blog of Bob DeMarco.

He raises an issue about our disease that has really troubled me. We had a Minneapolis woman missing in action some years ago found in Dakota having lost her way. Why, I asked? If they knew she had Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) who on god’s green earth would let her drive.

Then I got AD. I met lots of folks with AD who drove and thank god for that. I can get a ride, easy. One of my good friends drives well but his memory is long gone. His sense of directions is included in the loss. He doesn’t get lost he just can’t find his way very well. We are perfect together; my memory remains pretty good, my sense of direction as good, we get there.

I don’t drive. It was suggested I not drive before diagnosis. Diagnosis validated the direction. It was tougher than tough to accept because there was no way I could see any fault or impediment in my driving. To defy my wife and doctor I took a simulated driving test, just to show them. I failed it miserably. That was my Waterloo. I felt I had been emasculated.

A Caretaker I met at an Alz.Org meeting commented on how she won’t let her husband drive and believes anyone with AD should automatically be disqualified from driving. I found her absoluteness offensive. Her’s was the same reaction that produced my question how someone could have let the Minneapolis person with AD drive in the first place.

Since becoming more informed about this I am more circumspect about quick opinions.

I am glad my friend can drive, I do not see his driving dangerous and somehow after finding some place new, how difficult that may be, he has no trouble finding his way back. Forgetting where you are, where you’re going or how you got there is altogether something different.

Bad driving is a danger to not only self but everyone else. Getting lost in your head is risk to your self, you personal integrity and the well being of your loved ones. There was cause for me giving up driving because of my difficulty multi-tasking which showed itself in heavy urban traffic. In sparsely populated areas with a reduced multitude of distractions I am comfortable driving as is my wife who first called me on driving.

When do you take keys, prohibit a person from getting behind the wheel? That is one tough call. The article posted talks of the more difficult time with men on prohibiting driving. I believe this is likely true for a variety of reasons.

In my case I associated driving with my masculinity. I did this in terms of my loss of independence, my burgeoning vulnerability and dependence on others. It added up as a loss of much of my community.

Men do not socialize, form intimate non-sexual relationships, and communicate generally with other men, so I believe. We are acculturated to be aggressive, competitive, and watch our back. We are the breadwinner first. We tend to be husband, father, friend, secondarily. (This may of course be limited the old farts like me coming out of the ‘50’s.)

So much of our inter-communication with others is “going to.” We go to meetings, we go golfing, we go to the club, we go out to lunch, we go to the ball game etc. Do we call one another, do we us the other media methods of staying in touch such as email, text messaging, face-booking, tweeting or other forms as so many of our female peers do? Nope!

When you don’t drive you don’t do a lot of things!

A bus can be helpful if you are close to a stop and your destination is too.

Metro Mobility is great, but! It has no spontaneity to it. You call three days before, the window of pickup and return can take up to an hour, and it you finish early better have a book, they don’t come early.

Cabs are great, but it kind of sucks to pop $20 - $40 bucks to get beyond what you could otherwise walk to.

You don’t have the freedom to impulsively or spontaneously get together with someone. Arranging for participation at meetings can be a pain. I could go on. Said simply the freedom to go is a process you plan rather than simply hop in the car and do.

You do work around it and make the best of it, but, how nice it would be if I could just drive. I do not have that independence. I need someone to take me.

A good example of this is this: I am a poor golfer, love it nonetheless. I hate to ask my wife for a ride. She has to take me, go back, come back when I am done and take me back home. For two hours of golfing I am asking her for two hours going and coming broken up by the time Mikey is out playing. No, thank you. I hate to ask a friend. When I have it means their going coming taking returning. Hey, only if they initiate and volunteer do I feel right about it.

I even looked at a bus, but: Lugging the clubs to the bus stop, from the destination stop to the course and back again; Well it is all pretty cumbersome.

I am not crying about this, I am citing this as illustration of why it is hard for this man to not drive and how I feel that is associated with my acculturation as a male. That’s where the emasculation comes in.

I get along well with my limitations. I have learned to enjoy what I can do and concentrate on that; don’t look back. That’s where my action is. I nonetheless raise what could be construed as lament to underscore the difficulty in pulling someone’s wheels.

It is a tough call. I would accommodate the risk of someone getting lost rather than warehousing them either at home or in the Home. At the same time there is no way we can countenance safety for self or others if a person’s driving amounts to that. In that case pull the keys.

How do you know? Have an astute and articulate wife as I do. Take a simulated driving test, not necessarily a behind the wheel test. The test administered to me by a wonderful occupational therapist Joette Zola at Abbot Hospital in Minneapolis, MN, tested speed, reflex, discernment in multiple hazard distraction, etc.

This test was later validated when a neuro-psychometric battery disclosed dysfunction in my frontal lobe producing low ranges in executive function, multi-tasking and diminished acuity in orbital peripheral vision.

I don’t have the final answer, this answer I can volunteer.

Cause and Cure in the Alzheimer’s Fast Lane

Spun From my Fog Infested Yet Functioning Brain

An article entitled “Nutritional Drink, Imaging Show Promise For Alzheimer's” recently ran on CNN. It was sent me by my son. I found it interesting. Interesting in the promise it suggests now that Ginkgo isn’t doing the trick, the jury is still out on cell phone radiation and so many other causes being considered.

“Cause and Cure in the Alzheimer’s Fast Lane.” Hmmmm? What will produce either? What can cure it, slow it, or work through it? Valid questions all of them. Answers will sooner or later come. I can’t wait and hope it will be of a Cure.

This does produce thought from my always inquiring mind, brain damaged as it is by dementia nonetheless still functioning in overdrive.

I wonder really what causes Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)? Reasons are many, the usual: dysfunctional enzyme activity in the brain, synapse dysfunction, amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and even more complex possibilities. AD seems to be a burgeoning epidemic. Another inquiring thought slipping sideways in my mind asks: “Yes, and what about autism, same burgeon, same target for damage, viz. brain”.

Maybe epidemics are in process; maybe better diagnosis is disclosing the mushrooming count of the many afflicted by each disease. What bothers me in looking at AD or Autism is what is its real cause? Always that question is lurking vaguely beyond any real understanding other than the complexity of mechanisms observed or hypothecated as happening when the disease occurs.

So, if it is amyloid acting, why? Synapse missing, why? Could it be a mix of one or more, with perhaps some stroke added to the recipe?

Constantly orbiting never hitting the mark there is the unanswered question: What is it that causes the aberration occurring in the brain that produces what is found and what is manifest as abnormal physical condition along with similar behavior described as AD?

For ten years I represented a major chemical company. As their National Counsel I was assigned all of their cases involving pesticide injury, pesticide cause diseases and disorders and pesticide groundwater contamination in the United States. I served this client in this position from 1982 to 1992.

When the client called I told them they were out of there blinkin’ mind, I was no more than a country lawyer in the Midwest. I undertook their representation when I decided they were really interested in me, in me personally handling the trial of each of these cases in each of the 50 States.

The relationship persevered for ten years until I decided it was stress enough and resigned. In the meantime 100% of my professional commitment was given to this.

It found me in litigation in 35 different states with well over 100 catastrophic cases in process. Stressful it was, lonely, more so. I was in an airplane, court associated room or hotel room away from home except weekends when all I could do was rest and get ready to leave again on Sunday evening.

Did stress cause AD? It certainly could have. If interested read my book: From AA to AD, a Wistful Travelogue now available on amazon.com by clicking on the title.It identifies not only that stress but the heavy load of stress I carried throughout my life. It also identifies my abusive alcohol ingestion.

Stress can be a cause. Alcoholism could be a cause.

I cite my experience in National Litigation for another reason however. That has to do with the environmental exposures we all experience in the modern world. We encounter so many substances not around years ago.

Wikipedia describes Toxin: Toxins can be small molecules, peptides, or proteins that are capable of causing disease on contact with or absorption by body tissues interacting with biological macromolecules such as enzymes or cellular receptors. Toxins vary greatly in their severity, ranging from usually minor and acute (as in a bee sting) to almost immediately deadly (as in botulinum toxin).

I don’t suggest they are toxins this myriad of substances to which we are exposed and have no idea what if any adverse effect they may have. Whether singular substance or a mix of substances or chronic exposure to any and/or all is adverse, we have no idea until we see the effect after the fact.

Then under the rules of epidemiology we can look back and hypothesize: were any and/or all the reason for the anomaly observed and diagnosed as endogenously caused by environment exposure the cause of the malady? If so than we can call the substance or mix toxic.

The process of getting there is slow, arduous and too often speculative. Epidemiology is slow and careful and inexact at best.

As a safety measure government controls many substances offered in the market place. In its production and sale, it requires substantial toxicological testing of substances before they can be placed in the marketplace.

By testing exposure on animals following certain protocols it can be extrapolated with some accuracy whether or not it could be harmful to humans.

This is unfortunately not enough. Anyone with any expertise can tell you, “Who really knows until the product has been on the market a sufficiently long period of time, a sufficiently large number of people have been exposed sufficiently, over a sufficiently long time, to be able to say ‘Yes it does or No it doesn’t?”

I hear this and think “Wow. How at risk we all are.” If I voice this response the expert is quick to say: “But!” “When the product is helpful to many people, when its use benefits mankind, is it justified to keep it off the market?” The argument goes on, “if it keeps it off the market will we ever know if the product is dangerous to man?”

The answer to that would involve at least ten more posts with too many reference sources.

The answer in turn never gets to the next question, “can we toxicologically and epidemiologically test but one substance or must all substances that might come together as a soup mix, or an exposure, in a given time, over a period of time, be enough to tell us anything?”

The routes of exposure are near infinity, the simplest being entering the human body though ingestion, inhalation or absorption. Then there is human to human contagion, genetic heredity, genetic mutation, this but opens the door.

To take this anywhere exhausts my demented brain. All I need to say of it: “Please, someone with the education, training, facilities and both the global and focal intellect to find answers, do so, now!”

Which gets me back to the article: Let’s hope this is a remedy. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Souvenaid was an answer, an answer that could be as natural as the cause unnatural?

Stroke and Alzheimer’s Disease: Partners in Crime

MCI Symposium: Vascular Dementia and MCI, Part 1

So much more is needed to be understood about the interaction on the brain produced by the mixed cocktail of AD, Stroke, along with adding Hi Blood Pressure to that mix.

Is it AD, or Stroke, or Lewy's Body, Picks, generic Frontal Lobe, other lobe, whatever? The key to the view is to see it as dementia!

With dementia comes the need for help and treatment. Classification considerations are important but secondary. Treatment, medication, prognosis all vary with what it may be classified to be if it can be classified.

Bottom line still reads dementia.

I have posted in my Archive an article the appeared in the Tangled Neuron, an excellent Blog about matters of currency regarding dementia. The article entitled: MCI Symposium: Vascular Dementia and MCI, Part 1 speaks of the mixed bag of Stroke and AD.

It notes that too often a diagnosis confines itself to one or the other and not looked on as caused by both.

If it’s AD it is treated one way if stroke, a little bit differently, but not importantly so. AD gets much more attention. Stroke is kind of Oh-hum if the person is physically impaired therapize it; if AD, medicate it; if patient can care for him/her self let her/him; if not, warehouse ‘em!

Too often overlooked as an important need, helping the patient live with the paradigm shift their lives have entered. Help in needed in coping. Success can be had in brain training. If the brain is blasted by AD or by clot or bleed, the part affected is over. The remaining brain is not and needs work to help it find and work different pathways closed off by the damage.

Too much concentrates on finding a cure. To little is done on establishing good care. It is in this arena, anyone, with any dementia needs a lot more of this than is out there.

AN ENCLAVE OF PEACE AND TRANQUILITY GIVES NURTURE TO ONE’S SOUL

I have received many gifts from the mixed bag my diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) delivered. In the good part of the bag are these:

1. Recognizing my need for routine and maintaining a calm environment around me.

2. Knowing I have no place I still need to go or thing I need to be.

3. I don’t have to any longer; I do only if I want to.

4. There is time enough because all of the rest of the time has run out on me. That’s been taken out of my hands. I am therefore not responsible for that clock any longer.

5. There is nothing I yet need to prove, that part is absolutely over for me! And, Thank God!

What do I have as a result? A far more tranquil life, much more devoid of stress, a chance to be positive with what time there is for me.

What does that leave behind? The list leads to infinity! Let my answer be that given to folks retiring:

Select a workable list of things you like to do and do them, but leave enough time for a nap.

All of my life I looked for whatever it was which would make me happy. I sought fulfillment and meaningful activities. I endeavored to do that which I perceived as needed to do by me. All of that is now over, I am done, and there is nothing more I can do. I have but to sit back and take it all in.

Writ large my aphorism for my life:

The best way to discover yourself is to simply be yourself!

There is nothing more to it than that. Why did it take so long and such a devastating disease to get me there? I guess that is what my play book called for.

Can you do it earlier? I think so. That struck me as I read about Why America Needs Trains which I have posted on my archive. Joe Biden discusses his 7,000 rides on train. His point of course is the value to all of us in having train service available.

The content of the article prompted my thoughts of the tranquility Joe found in filling a need made necessary by his love and responsibility for his children. To continue serving as a Senator after the tragic loss of his wife and daughter he needed to be home nights with his children. To accomplish that in the busy corridor between DC and Delaware the most suitable choice for him was to train it.

He described his experience training. Reading it produced nostalgia in me of simpler and slower times, of the wonderful peace and serenity that seemed so much more available to me in those times. Thinking of that reminded me of its loss. My loss occurred as I got serious about doing all those things made necessary by being what I had become in my young and middle adult years.

It sounds like Joe is getting a little share of peace and serenity with each train ride. I know I am getting a lot of that now because, would you believe, I have AD!

Alzheimer's Perspective

I have posted what I consider to be an excellent anthology about AD. It is Baby Boomer Alzheimer's Perspective by Bob DeMarco whose Blog is called Alzheimer’s Reading Room. I am posting it for two reasons:

1. It is inclusive of so much about AD
2. To have it handy every time I need to review it.

Take a look at it, it is worth it!

And,




Happy Winter to Us All!

OUR MANTRA FOR FUTURE PLANNING:

EITHER I’M HEALTHY AND FINE, OR I’M OUTTA HERE

This Blog concentrates not on dying, not on the disease (AD) so much as coping with but one facet of it. Having it, coping with it, treating it, making the care of it as good as it can possibly be.

Death is very real to one processing AD. I think about it a lot and am comfortable with its eventuality. In fact it is my escape, viz; I’m outta here, not soon enough! The time in between is what worries me.

I have posted an article from the New York Times, OVERLOOKING THE FRAIL YEARS on my archive. Click on it to go there. It speaks in general of this. What it has to say blends in then gets specific about AD.

I have done all the paperwork to get sick. I have a Power of Attorney, Health Care Declaration, putting my wife Diane in charge, equipping her with the necessary authority. I have done a current estate plan arranging our estate as much as I can to have it in Diane’s name so she has some flexibility should the home care, assisted living or nursing home become a fact of our lives the cost of which defies both imagination and the cost of anyone’s retirement.

Things are fine as long as I remain in early stage, cognizant, able to take some care of myself, which diminishes each day of this journey. This along with my mind will go. When they do that’s the rub!

I grapple with the moral consequence of taking my own life. I would like, in that moment of clarity between competency and incompetence to be able to say, “Hey Diane, let’s fly to Oregon and do it, call Dr Kevorkian!”

The likelihood of being able to make that call is not good. My other option is to put in my Health Care Declaration that when I am no longer able to decide myself that Diane or whomever else is my Health Care Agent take me on a trip and do the job.

Doing it before is the moral dilemma for me. Do I as a living, responsible person have that option with my life? I certainly can’t justify doing it now. When can I justify it? To be able to justify it is almost paradoxical with the reason for doing it, namely, nothing cognitive left.

Barring this kind of I’m Outta Here method leaves me having to deal with the current and the progress of this disease.

Currently, while I still “got it” good planning dictates I stay here, where I am, as long as I possibly can. The doing of that I discussed in my Blog on its last posting.

Getting ready for the time of burden, that time I need help and need further to incur expense for it, my resources are quite limited. We have done all we can on our part.

This leaves us to hoping and waiting that the Cloud of Inequity lifts.

The system has protected the very rich with the ability to pay out of their own pocket without that causing any attrition in their worth.

The poor are covered by the availability of governmental aid.

Those of us in the middle are screwed! We pay as we go. Not only the recipient of care but the spouse of that recipient pays. Both of them are required to pay until their estate is exhausted. This leaves the surviving spouse out in the cold after all of this is over. Even the welfare door is closed to them because pf the severe restrictions placed on Welfare in the last number of conservative, “Starve the Beast” measures that even Clinton fell prey to.

This leaves little but lament to do about it. This I have been doing and will continue to do. On the plus side there is movement attempting to make care more respondent to the capacities of those who have to pay for it.

The Mega, Uniform, Highly Leveraged way has proved useless. The cost is too high, the services to low. Wall Street Initiative, Government backed and regulated, Cost Capital Construction, Profligate Pay to the People at the top has come together to kill it.

We need desperately to find formulas for care that realistically take cost of care into account and service the real need we have of providing care as the failed semblance of it as now exists.

It is this area that needs planning from all of us!

SOMETHING CAN BE DONE!

There is a thread running on a favorite Alzheimer’s (AD) Board: Alzheimer’s Association Online Community, which can be seen by clicking on I Have Alzheimer's or Other Related Dementia. under the heading “Help” or click on Help to get right to the thread.

It deals with experiences of my fellow AD afflicted. It was started by a 73 year old retired doctor who recently found the board. To get involved he started this thread looking for help and accordingly named it “Help”.

I cite it for these reasons:

1. It contains excellent accounts of folks with this disease, responding to Tom K the person starting the thread;

2. Sharing their experience and giving their advice.

3. The additional reason for citing it is to lead anyone reading this to the overall forum which is in my view one of the best for all of us and any of us affected by this disease.

4. I additionally cite it as a pretext to naming two other sites that I follow daily or as often as they are posted:

a. Alzheimer’s Reading Room
b. The Tangled Neuron
There are so many other sites that are worth the reading, the three above are the ones I don’t fail to miss.

Over the Holiday I missed the “Help” thread that started in early December. I just came upon it. It is interesting and merits discussion.

Tom K approaches the disease with equanimity. Lisa is on the other side of the spectrum. She is angry about loss, early onset, and difficulty of dealing life with this disease. Alan and Iris are in between. There is anger acceptance and a certain “Let’s get on with it attitude” to their comments.

These and the others commenting reflect the spectrum of the personal experience of being afflicted with AD and the personal reaction. Each and every one are valid and emanate from the uniqueness of each person. The disease is different as it manifests itself in each different person it afflicts. Different parts of the brain become prey; different intellectual levels, talent, personality and life experiences react in different ways. The only real similarity is the abruptness with which it intrudes into the lives of the one afflicted and all the loved ones affected in turn.

There is another common denominator that is apparent. This is best exemplified in comments of Mimi. I met Mimi as we served together on the Nat Alz Advisory Board last year. Mimi like me is not early onset. She like me is early stage. I was diagnosed at age 69, she at a later age. She is now in her eighties. She remains sharp as a tack, is with it living on her own and involved. She is involved in doing something with her experience of having this disease.

This is best communicated in the U-Tube presentation she gave recently for Mass Mutual. Click on Mimi to listen and see.

I have corresponded with Mimi the most about AD and what to do about it while and since serving on the board. She is committed as I am to the proposition of doing something about this disease we have to maintain the quality of our lives as long as possible.

She advocates as I do Eat Right (Mediterranean Diet), Exercise Daily, Get Involved with Stimulating Intellectual and Creative Activity. Add the medication now available and you can keep the beast outside the door for awhile and avoid being a burden to your loved ones and your community any more than you now are. This is a formula that works.

It is also a formula that produces a far better more positive attitude. Of interest, not directly in point but close, I have posted a column to appear in tomorrow’s New York Times: How to Train the Aging Brain It talks about what we can do about our brains, at our age, in our predicament.

This is Mimi’s point, Something Can Be Done!