The Bizarre and Bewildering World of Alzheimer’s Disease

Because I have Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) I have become more interested in topics that relate to our condition and our lives. The lives I mean are those of us affected by this disease, we the afflicted and our loved ones.

My interest is not limited to just AD. It includes anything which affects us living in the AD world. This includes a variety of areas concerned with care given us by caretakers, as well as that provided by our community and government.

It is in this topic arena I have posted two articles on my archive. The first The Graying Workforce appearing in the New Old Age Column of the NYT and the second, A Winning Economic Strategy for the G.O.P., appearing in the Economix column of the same New York Times. Click on the title of either to go to my Archive to read them.

These two articles speak of survival, personally asserting life style to enhance Quality of Life and the plight of the economy. It is the precarious economy which underscores the necessity to care for ourselves at the lowest possible level in which it can be done efficaciously.

The topics survival, sustaining quality of life and the economy of it all, fit together. Our life in the AD World is unique. It is an end life consequence but it includes a time of life continuing different than any we have lived before. We can no longer do what we did before, but, we remain in its early stages quite able to do much for ourselves. It falls to us to make the best of it. It is ours to find the best ways to secure quality of life as our days live out in the slow deterioration we experience doing so.

The first article struck me so keenly on what we can do. It was a general article about seniors working, some because they must; others do so for the social context or for the sense of contributing and the sense of fulfillment as a result. The other point that struck me was that of choice. Working at what you choose for the joy of it.

Always in the early years and in the middle years of our lives we were entirely occupied striving. We worked at what we wanted to become, once there, worked at the expectations of what we had become. We had time for nothing else if we wanted to do justice to the task before us. We of course did just that.

Then when our lives reach the senior shelves we found it to be nothing but that. It is on that shelf we are able to see out and view an altogether new perspective open to us. It is the horizon of our choosing. Ours but to make that selection we choose and proceed on our way. This is what the Gray One in the article is about.

It is also what I am about. My horizon was different than that of Linh Pham in the article. We are not different in age, we are different in circumstance. He yet has his health, I do not. Nonetheless we have both made the choice this time in our respective lives offer us.

That choice for both of us was undertaking to do, within the capacity we could do, something that would be both satisfying and fulfilling. His is to do have the social contact he does by work and he is supplementing his pension. Mine is to sit home and write about what is keeping me home and unable to do many things.

Mine is fulfilling because not only is it a choice available to me at my age 74, it is one the uniquely allows me to hope I make a difference with what I do with an otherwise devastating disease. I enjoy writing; thank God I can yet do so. My payback is the satisfaction of doing something that might be helpful.

Not many of us can still write and talk about it in full sentences with this disease. In that way my disease, hateful as it is, comes in a very palatable gift package.

It is ours to demand our quality of life and to get help in anything that does that. It is here where we look out at our economy which clouds our thoughts with trepidation.

We as a body politic have done something despicable. We have literally painted ourselves into a corner that will not allow us out, and to make matters worse, that paint is not about to dry to allow us to do so.

With the gridlock together with the inherent animosity and distrust that fuels it; our political system is in irremediable deadlock. The system, the sides in the system that feed it the venom it spews, is incapable of serving anything other than its own divisiveness.

To add to the cake mix is us, the electorate. What did we expect with the vote that was made in the last election cycle? Certainly it echoed what all of us were saying, namely, throw the bums out! But really? In this case it is really throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

If you are republican can you really exalt as you look at the economy, at the deficit, at the runaway profiteering that is being conducted by the super rich and the struggle the rest of us are left to? If you are a democrat can you exalt in the way we squandered a mandate by not fighting back because we thought we could work it out in the end? God, what a fix we are in.

I so hope the Republicans can see beyond their immediate goals and use the franchise they now have for the country and the people of it. If not, tell me, what’s left?

This is the predicament that one with AD sees as bizarre and bewildering. 

Great News: Teva Introduces Generic Aricept

Bob DeMarco at Alzheimers Reading Room reported the following today. Click on the full title to go to the reading room to read it, I am however carrying it in its entirety here.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2010

Teva Introduces Generic Aricept (Donepezil Hydrochloride) Orally Disintegrating Tablets

By Bob DeMarco 

Alzheimer's Reading Room

Teva Pharmaceuticals is pleased to announce the introduction and availability of Donepezil Hydrochloride Orally Disintegrating Tablets. This product is AB rated and bioequivalent to Aricept ODT®*. Donepezil HCl Orally Disintegrating Tablets are available in 5 mg and 10 mg strengths, in sizes of UD 30.

“Generic pharmaceuticals are playing an increasingly important role in healthcare cost containment,” states Maureen Cavanaugh, V.P., Customer Operations & Marketing. “Teva Pharmaceuticals continues to lead the way with timely new product launches.”

Teva Pharmaceuticals, located in North Wales, Pennsylvania, is the leading pharmaceutical manufacturer for both new and total prescriptions.‡ The company has an aggressive Research and Development effort and one of the best overall ANDA approval records in the industry.‡ 

Please Note: These are "Orally Disintegrating Tablets". At this time, I don't have any pricing information.

Interestingly, I called three major pharmacies today and the pharmacists acted like I was a nut when I asked about generic aricept. All three times I was told that there is no generic version of Aricept.

More news to follow as I get it. 

By the way, I find that most pharmacist are very helpful and full of useful information.

So Much that can be So Simple

So much of what can be done in the care of an Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) patient is so simple but can to so much.

Bob DeMarco, a great columnist editor and founder of Alzheimer’s Reading Room often reports on his charge, his loving irascible, 91 year old mother. Today I read a report on Dotty and light and the good it does her. it is entitled Alzheimer's Disease Tip, The Importance of Bright Light  Read it, click on the title to go to the reading room or on Archive to go there where I have posted it.

This is so simple yet so real. The NIH (National Institute of Health) ponderously reported: Since it is not scientifically proven that any of the things we do will prolong to process of AD, therefore, Ex Cathedra, with typical Episcopal like Pomposity they declare, nothing will help!  Gee thanks guys, you sure have filled out those job descriptions you wrote yourself!

Any little bit helps. When you have this disease it is akin to Ajax hauling, hauling the huge rock, the Earth, up the mountain side, never seeming to arrive at the top. Like Ajax the weight is overwhelming, the direction steep and arduous, and no lifetime award when you make it. When you get there you just croak!

If you have it, AD, the only way to avoid eating from the nearest hemlock bush or slitting your wrists the right way is to get serious about making your life something worth continuing.

Work on quality of life. Make things about you the best they can be. That gets you back involved. It doesn’t mean going after that new job, buying the red convertible or getting a date with that cute blonde down the street. Those times are long gone.

What isn’t gone is living out the days left with peace and dignity.

To start do these exercises; Eat Right, Exercise Daily, Participate in Social, Creative and Intellectual Stimulating Activity. Get out, get lots of light, get lots of air, see lots of people, go to a movie, sit and watch kids at a playground.

If you can find an activity with kids, some senior kid program, this can be so uplifting.

We can love, and can love a lot. Get out and learn to love than do it a lot.

And then my friend the Doctor asserted, “In Spite of Everything Said We Have the Best Health Care System in the World.”

I still remember; I will never forget; you would never believe the sincerity and the conviction with which he said it. I am sorry good doctor friend you are so wrong! It is our American arrogance, coupled with its ignorance, bonded to our denial, immersed in the power of that propaganda machine feeding us justification, viz. Media + Politics + Fueled by Lobbyist Influence + Managed by Profiteers convincing us to sit back wait and watch.

Watch, what are we waiting for, "the train of course dummy.” So said to a passerby seeing her on the platform in the train station empty of all movement of people and trains, both being long gone. ”Cheez!” responds the passerby, the trains already gone, you know they quit running, everybody flies nowadays.”

Do we keep the train running and the schedules met? Or, do we adapt to what is now and new?

I am posting an article today that was in this morning’s New York Times, entitled In a Land of the Aging, Children Counter Alzheimer’s. click on the title to read it in the Archive.

What is the significance of the article? It talks of the people in South Korea who have an influx of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and what they are doing as a nation and as a society about it. They have lessons for us. I recommend its reading.

Their measures are right on the mark and do not incur expense.

They recognize early diagnosis, early attention to people with AD. They reason is saves in the long run both prolonging the early stage and more importantly teaching people to care for their AD at home. In this they recognize the country can not afford to simply keep building expensive nursing homes as the final solution of care.

Long term Health Care Insurance is paid for by the government. Their practice in care directs itself both to helping and to finding economy of care for all afflicted with this horrible disease.

It enlists all levels of society in providing assistance and pays special attention to the value of the young, the children, in what they can do and the effectiveness of what they do.

They recognized the coming calamity that AD is; they are starting now to prepare to meet it head on.

This is remarkable, more so it is admirable. If we try and compare it to what is being done by the “Best Health Care System in the World” our efforts rank inexcusable.

This blog comment is not intended to rant or to criticize. Giving us the Benefit of Balance, South Korea’s aging population is greater than ours. They are coming to the calamity sooner. They recognize that and the article is showing what they are doing to meet the problem and avoid its potential for causing catastrophe.

This article is a lesson; a lesson in learning what can be done, should be done and ultimately will need to be done. Not doing will only make the coming calamity that much worse, that much more costly and above all finally devastating to our entire society here in America.

It is ours to ask: “Not should I or should I not, but, what, when and how much do we do, where do we start, can we afford to delay?”

All in Moon Shadow, Part 2 of 2 parts

I ended with the Part 1 of All in Moon Shadow with the following 3 paragraphs:

Life is but a weigh station on our trip in the Cosmos. The Cosmos, whatever it is from which our consciousness emanates. It was conscious before will be there and conscious after we leave this body to decompose back to earth. This body has been but the Avatar through which we navigate in this unique Cyberspace we know as Life.

That is what breaking down the free will each of us knows so well and each of us understands to be uniquely ours, it starts to make sense how truly transitory living is. That is why the article yesterday was significant, deserved the comment I gave it.

Life is but a moment in something so much more of which we are or at least part.

What is this Cosmos and us in it, in it wholly or as part? Call it God! Shucking our anthropomorphizing (making human and equally limited) of god we see but active power available for the sharing all for the asking.

The best that can be said of it, there is a transcendent power available for us that works within us to better our lot by being here in this dimension utilizing it.

Fit into this framework when AD reared its ugly head I asked: “So what’s with this Crap. Have I not had enough to deal with? I need this agony too?”

The answer was found by doing as I did with this abrupt and complete change wrought over me. My doing was articulated in the surrender to it; the acceptance of it; the act of choice I made to produce as good a run having AD as I could. The validation came in the sense of fulfillment, in the peace and serenity I found conducting myself in my new mission.

This measured the greater of any other undertaking of my life of which they were many. All of my life I felt I was the Great Imposter, soon to be found out, in spite of all the success I evidenced by each accomplishment of my life. All said and done, I felt with my success it was no more than an accident, I was an imposter having no right to take any credit for any of these accidents.

With AD, no longer was I the Imposter; I was for real; I was about being real.  Being real responding to my condition, AD, I was sucking up the beauty of finally having the gift that would challenge me fully. This was my ticket for having taken this mantle my life. It is in this I finally found fulfillment having lived.

I anything sounds the Imposter it is in what I just said and believe to be. But, it is not!

That vague sense of phony, that feel of bottomless void in me, no longer plagues me. Finally I found the round hole in the center of the wheel that fits the circumference of me, the axle that fits securely in it.

My damaged brain has quit working in many of its functions. I am blessed nonetheless, much cognitive function remains. What remains has served me wonderfully. I have worked the buns off my brain. I sincerely believe in response it has developed new pathways, grown new tissue and tapped more fully into my right brain to facilitate me in this cognitively damaged environment I now am in.

This convinces me that my mind is more than my brain. It convinces me my mind is in no way limited by my brain. My brain which is subject to the bio-chemical process of my body can dysfunction, malfunction or deteriorate destroying my capacity to think with it in the same way my body is and will do in every one of its other functions.

The brain serves me in the same way a CPU serves the function of a computer. The brain takes the data it stores evaluates and analyzes it. This essentially is the exercise of its power which we call cognition. What is done with the product of this function is what we make of it in our finite consequence.

We also  have another use that can be made of the product of cognition. This use is not of finite consequence as is our product from brain function. The product doesn't start and stop with birth and death as function of our brain does. 

This other use is what the mind does with product of cognition. The mind is neither controlled nor limited by the brain.

The mind transcends the brain, is part of our overall consciousness, which transcends the part of us that is born, lives and then dies.

Therefore, when the brain is damaged or breaks down in part it has the potential to adjust and adapt. It is a living bio-chemical process. As such it is able to think through a new pathway using the overall mind for that purpose. The new pathway is the CPU like connection, the  combination of our brain body working with our mind. It is the property of the brain, it interfaces with our mind.

The mind is not limited by the damage to the brain.

It is with AD I came to understand and appreciate the versatility of the brain in action, whole, healthy or as in my case damaged and demented. The brain thrives, adjusts, adapts in spite of the deterioration it experiences with this disease. As such we can do so much with it.

In this we can contribute to our quality of life as can those who would help us. Creating programs to enhance this potential we have particularly as we are in the Early Stage of AD are so very important.

For my purposes as I surmise it, there are two factors I’ve had presented to my by AD. 

First is to suffer this disease and the deteriorating brain that is part of it. 

Secondly to demonstrate what power remains to work our amazing capacity of brain power. Putting our mind to it (literally) working around our deficiencies as yet further of them impact us. 

All in all it is a losing battle, but while I stay on top with the cognition to show for it I will keep writing to demonstrate what is happening to my mind as AD progresses.

While this is happening I am performing in another scene of this multi act play in which I am the Player. Living this act, the illusion of dementia, I am able to do something good I could not without having the disease.

All In Moon Shadow

Part 1 of 2 parts!

Yesterday’s post I suspect was difficult to read, and those that did likely found it boring at best! What on earth does the topic The Maze of Free Will and Other Random Acts of Consciousness have to do with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)

If nothing else it demonstrates the fact I have it. How is that? I failed to explain myself in the writing of it. Today’s post will undertake that task.

Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher described reality as shadows on the wall, made bythe people watching them while sitting in front of the wall with a fire burning behind them casting their shadow on the wall. As the fire danced the shadows danced. As seen on the wall this was construed by those people watching as reality.

Like the curtain falling in front of him exposing the Wizard of Oz to Dorothy, the shadow dance became just that as I responded to living in the AD world. My life, living, all of us are but in the clarity and the shadows shown by the lightness of the moon. What we see and believe it to be is not.

If this was for real, we would not need birth to get in and death to get out. We would not need a mind with which to think nor experience with which to learn. For what purpose would any of this be?

From conclusion drawn simply from logic, (logic being one of our inherent proclivities) there has to be more than what we believe this world to be. If it is not life in our universe is no more than a paradox that defies that basic law that day follows night and 1 + 1 = 2.

Science relies on this kind of order to its knowing everything about our world. If not for that planes would not fly, bombs would not explode, x-ray would not work. Is technology and gravity something we can’t depend on; something denying any conclusion reached by us in our day to day activity?

When I was told “It’s AD” I asked why? My answer became “It’s all in the Moon Shadow!

Everything about the chaotic history of the happening of this my life came together into a sensible whole. With clarity I was able to see why I came into this world, the purpose I had to fulfill and the means with which to do it. The moon showed this clearly, finally.

The AD was in the moon shadow. It was there, it was something I didn’t need to see it all that well, but could not deny it was there. It was something I had to deal with and the clarity gave me enough light in which to do it.

This is metaphor I know; please excuse my Poetic Irish Heritage and my Jewish exposition of true reason. With Buddhism I was able to form it into a working model..

The Buddhist Philosophy boils down to this. It’s all Illusion; do not take it so seriously. Like a bad gas pain it too will pass.

Life is but a weigh station on our trip in the Cosmos. The Cosmos, whatever it is from which our consciousness emanates. It was conscious before will be there and conscious after we leave this body to decompose back to earth. This body has been but the Avatar through which we navigate in this unique Cyberspace we know as Life.

That is what breaking down the free will each of us knows so well and each of us understands to be uniquely ours, it starts to make sense how truly transitory living is. That is why the article yesterday was significant, deserved the comment I gave it.

Life is but a moment in something so much more of which we are or at least part.

The Maze of Free Will and Other Random Acts of Consciousness.

I am today out to bust your brain. I am writing about cognition, reality and us in a longer essay to be carried whenever it is done. This post is using an article from the New York Times on July 22, 2010. It is entitled: Your Move: The Maze of Free Will Click on it to go to my Archive to read it.

If your brain doesn’t bust reading the article the significance I see in it are two observations I make of it.

The first: Philosophers are much like lawyers, my former crew. It takes them longer to say less than any group I know.

The second and purpose of my comment is this: Free will, our claim of natural heritage which makes us different than the animals, that personal distinguishing piece of god-endowed creation we claim ours, is not all that it seems to be.

We live and go on in a unique time-space limited environment with the bio-chemical capacity to live beyond our birth until that biochemical mass we are poops out and dies on us.

In between the two most important events of our lives, birth and death, we survive, learning becomes a major endeavor of doing so, and we learn more from what we learn. The subject of the essay I am working on is about the purposeful day to day happening of this process.

Our exercise of free will fits into the process. It is and is not as much as we would believe it to be. With the exercise of will, all that occurs before, all expected after, influence the act of now. Sometimes our before will control it, other times we see it exercised in ways that happen before we can do anything about it..

It is of course a moral act as the writer of the article discusses. The morality of any free will exercised must be measured in the context of all about it, including the one exercising the free will action.

Looking at a decision in the instant of now is difficult to measure in terms of moral efficacy. Dealing in the instant is like the pilot steering the ship. He is at sea, bound in a direction, on the move. Taking no account for the ship being piloted, the sea in which they are bound, the conditions about them weather included, all of the other exigencies of the moment, how do you measure the efficacy of the pilot executing a turn? Was he right, wrong, was it good, bad, is there even anything to measure?

The exercise of will is something we do and we don’t. We need to look at this, as well as all other matters of us, our world, all in it, were in it, yet to be in it, in the context of all of that, measuring what it is and what it is not.

It is time limited to the time, we, they, the universe itself occupies this constraint of overall existence. Doing so we must measure it from the greater whole of which we are but part, a passing fancy at that.

We need to see it from the whole of it. In this context, limited in our measure of it, it is but with wonder and awe we ponder it and apply it.

Like consciousness, were I to be asked to give a quick explanation my only response would be: “It sure is an interesting anomaly of being, I must lean more about it!” 

The Cult of Medocrity

Yesterday I spoke of the direction taken by evolution seemingly in development of a group mind. I spoke of Hive, of The Cult of Mediocrity.

In past reading I came across an article entitled “The Cult of Mediocrity.” Worth noting I saved it for comment in the future. My mention of it yesterday, “The Cult,” prompts me to use it and write about it today.

The article is in my Archive. Click on the title to go there and read it.

What is it and what on earth could that have to do with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)?

The answer lies in the difficulty there seems to be in the inability to find innovation in the treatment of AD and care given for those with it.

First, what is “The Cult?” In my view it is this. It is the penchant of “Us” to pull into groups of common purpose or common interest. It may simply be people gathering around a common geography, task, club, employment or activity. To successfully operate in group we have learned team play.

Team play means to trade your individuality to the structure of the team. There should be one leader the rest followers. The leader decides on courses of action, the followers do just that follow. The structure is more important than the individual worth of any member. Therefore individuality is submerged to what the group thinks, does and recommends.

This produces rules of conduct for each member.

Forbidden for any member of the group:

• To stand out in any way, different than the rest.
• To be better, smarter or more proficient than the rest
• To disagree with the group will about anything.
• To work harder, faster or more efficiently than the others.

The list could go indefinitely. The forgoing sets the tone of what I mean to say. It seems this process of group think casts a pale over the group and each member of the group. Worse than that, anything new or different not introduced through the existing chain of command will not be considered. The chain of command exists in part because of its predictably, the predictability to do the same thing each time. This predictability discourages innovation. This produces group comment like:

• We don’t do it that way
• Don’t get a carried away.
• Don’t be flashy
• That’s not part of my job description

This list goes on just like the last. The Cult in having its rules, in its asserting homogeny of all, offers security in belonging to it. That is the trade off. Another of its rule is to treat all qualifying members with equal respect so long as they toe the line.

To my way of thinking these rules stymie any creativity, innovation or excellence. All of these are counter productive to the group therefore they are not allowed. When in yesterday’s blog I talked about the evolution of the way we think moving toward a collective way of thinking, it has to be more than the hive way as fostered by the Cult of Mediocrity.

As the group think evolves to function more collectively the nature of its being a product of evolution will in someway retain the uniqueness that fuels the evolution. Stagnant entities do not evolve the atrophy.

And that is my concern with AD. We have groups for support, for research, we have styles of support, modalities for treatment and help. They exist and are employed purportedly to benefit us.

There seems to be little difference in any of the approaches or styles of treatment. Health care or medical care is misnamed medicine. The inappropriate nomenclature is all that is practiced. “Take this” is probably the number one if not only recommendation that crosses a doctor’s lips.

If there is not a medicine to cure it, let’s find it, they say. Might there be another way is not considered; “we do not do it that way.”

The practice of medicine is limited to two activities: Diagnose it by conducting the right test, then find the right medicine to treat it. The practitioner is a plumber and a data analyst. Are there any healers out there? Not really!

The back up support for AD misses the point in equal measure to the treating of it. If they can’t find the cure, they provide palliative care in the warehouse style that is done with large profit making Nursing Home Chains.

There is little an AD patient has to look for in-between diagnosis and warehousing. The Government works overtime to foster infrastructure profit for the entrepreneur, disregarding quality of care and the accelerating cost and the inability of folks to pay for it. The costs become prohibitive and Government exists to deny further entitlement and curtail the existing entitlement to all kinds of Government Aid.  

And the support organization continue their concentration on raising money for the cure and do not have the time to put together support programs to help those with the disease more functional and able to enjoy a quality of life.

Medicine has but one way as do most of the support groups. There way of doing it is in place because it is the way the do it! The end!

Building One Big Brain

The Article in the title of this blog Building One Big Brain appeared in the Opinionator Column of the New York Times on July 6, 2010. I have posted it in my Archive along with a companion article appearing in the New York Times dated Nov 21, 2010, entitled Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction. Click on ether title to go there to read it.

The first of the two articles caught my attention while I have been writing a fairly complex blog post I have entitled I Think Therefore I Am! I will post it as soon as I have completed it.

In that blog post I have been discussing in some depth what I have learned through my reading Particle Physics, science in general, together with a heavy dose of Cosmology and Buddhism, about the reality of existence.

In the same post I go into the manner our minds think and interact in the temporal universe occupied by us in our capsule of space and time. We think, we exercise this unique function of cognition with which we are endowed, to interact in this world.

The exercise of this function is both pragmatic, bent to getting the job done in the most accurate, quick, and efficient way. It is also common to the way all others with whom we interact do the same tasks. It learns to operate within that framework and as it gets totally involved in its assigned tasks. It has no time to do more than that.

In not using that function to do what is within our immediate attention horizon, being too busy to use more of these inherent powers of the mind, our minds languish until that unique time during aging where we are given to “Adding it all Up.” It is at that time our minds can re-awake to wonder what’s it all about?

That is the personal evolution of the brain as it leads us back to the Transcendence from which we came. All of those parts assembled in a lifetime are added up to be the step stool into interacting with the Cosmos. That is as I see it.

The article Giant Brain speaks of an altogether different anomaly of the same process. It speaks of Technology modifying our brain’s function to think in group rather than individually.

The second article Growing up Digital talks of the dangers to thinking in the technical framework. It is exhaustive in the breadth of its treatment of the topic.

I have been of the group opposed to any kind of group thinking. I call group thinkers “The Hive” as they operate. I characterize them as operating within the Cult of Mediocrity.

My consternation of thinking hive, doing the same as everyone else, destroys individuality. It stems creativity, and contains one in the confines of the group completely dominated by “We!” “This is the way We do it!” “We don’t do that!” “We don’t go there!” I have bemoaned the collective types Drones, worker bees, “I don’t have to think, therefore I don’t!”

I do not have the answer. I do not know what is best. Funny, it doesn’t matter either. What will happen will happen as much as I put my finger in the onrushing wall of water thinking it the hoe in the dike!

What I get off on in the end reading the first article Giant Brain is the wonder of creation, spontaneous generation, or whatever it is responsible for positioning me right now! Now finds me writing what I am thinking, right here, right now, sitting in my front room overlooking Minneapolis’ Downtown (See my toes in the lower left corner of the picture on the right. It is taken as I sit looking out!)

I exist in this dimension with the ticket to go to where it was from which I came (I believe) and carry out of here the good and the bad of my time spent (Karma).

At the same time while in this dimension I am part in the developing evolution of a common brain, made functional by all the rudiments of what we have become in living together in communication through all of our generations. All of what has been assembled is used to reach the goal of whatever that may be.

Stop here without the giant prognostication of what’s next? Reflect instead on our collective process of thought and we the organism collectively doing it.

In my study I have been struck by a number of events along the way in the development of what we all think.

I cite the following as but one example of the huge change that can occur with the change of mind occurring. In the course of the development of religious expression primeval man developed and early man believed in a vengeful god who required expiation as our form of obeisance of Him. (Translated, sacrifice to Him!)

Karl Jaspers theorized, Karen Armstrong in a book entitled “The Great Transformation” expanded this Idea, viz: Jaspers’ theory of Axial Age, that period 600 years before and 300 hundred after the start of the of the Common Era in which four great spiritual movements coalesced around the moral theme of Golden Rule, all occurring separately of the other, in different parts of the world. It is contended both by Jaspers and Armstrong that this event changed the direction of the religious expression of things spiritual commonly for all of man. No longer do we sacrifice to a god, we do good for each other.

We have built on that, everything from Jihad of the Muslims to Meditative Peace amongst Buddhists in community.

Many other examples exist suggesting the growing impact on us collectively as the power of cognition has developed amongst us. It could be discussed as evolution of the mind, pathological development of the mind, technical development of cognitive aids for the mind and we could go on.

Bottom line: What a wonderful gift we have to use. Makes you wonder where it is taking us. Taking us is one thing that’s for sure about it!

For Those Of Us With AD Can You Bode Anything But Bad?

Are we ready for this? There are so few mainstays left to help those who do not have the resource to help themselves.

First it was “Welfare as we Knew It.” That is what the bill eradicating so much of welfare was called. Since that time what does one do to care for themselves and family.

Medicaid has been one source. The current response of the electorate to the results of the last election cycle is that we need to “Starve the Beast” even more than was done in the years since “Morning in America” dawned with the Reagan Age.

Obama elected on a Mandate of Change tried, the Health Care Bill the masterpiece of so many other things that were done in the last 2 years of his administration. Apparently this has not set well with the Electorate that voted seeming to repudiate its vote in 2010.

The obvious answer is manifest in the change of the majority makeup of both houses of the Nation’s Congress.

I ask these questions. “What was the election of Obama in 2008 about?” I then ask “What is the revpudiation of that, the overwhelming vote for Republicans about. I for one don’t get it. The answer I will leave to hours of cable heads in quiet conversation!

What I do know is this foreboding expectation:

Medicaid will be curtailed and/or obviated at least in some states. Read the Article that appeared this morning in the New York Times entitled Opt-Out Illusion. Click on it to go to my Archive to read it.

According to Federal Rules as I understand them you can get Medicaid to pay Medical and Hospital expense if all you and your spouse own does not exceed around $103,000 + Homestead. If you have more and no insurance to pay it, you and your spouse are jointly obliged to pay it.

Welfare is already curtailed in all states stringently. Those of us affected by AD face both need of welfare programs and Medicaid when we can no longer care for ourselves. Current programs offer no more than pittance.

As an example in my home state Minnesota, $203 single $260 for married couple was available, may still be since slashed in 2010 by our Governor. It is unclear what else might exist, whatever may be there is minuscule.

The current climate in Washington is pushing for reduction of Medicaid then turning the paring knife on Medicare.

Hospital and medical costs and cost of Home Health, Assisted Living and Nursing Home Care are spiraling out of control. Jobs and wages are going down, net worth is plummeting and foreclosures increasing.

The current administration saved us from the self imposed bankers’ crisis only to be faulted by either not enough or too much. A valiant attempt was made to attack the Healthcare Crisis. Now that administration responsible for doing it is damned for doing to little or too much for the economy and concentrating too much on Health Care and at the expense of the economy.

Foreboding? You bet! You cannot find the reason why; you cannot find the answer where next?

For those of us with AD can you bode anything more then the sense that we have been let out to swing in the wind?

Alzheimer's Disease Patients Can Deceive Outsiders with Their Behavio

An article in this mornings Alzheimer’s Reading room entitled: Alzheimer's Disease Patients Can Deceive Outsiders with Their Behavior (click on title or on Archive to read it in the reading room or on my archive hit on the mark. 

Rather than my comment I have paraphrased. A comment from me would be redundant. The comments of the articles author excerpted as follows say it all:

One of the hardest things about caring for an Alzheimer’s patient can be the fact that there is frequently a feeling that no one else really knows what the caregiver is going through... 

Adding to this frustration, is the ability that many Alzheimer’s patients have to “pull themselves together” and present a seemingly “normal” front to other people, even to their physicians.

Once at the doctor's office, she could hold an intelligent conversation. She appeared pleasant. If he asked questions she didn't know, she could even make excuses. For example, "I never really paid attention to the name of this hospital". Great Grams even tried to change the subject, like pointing out the doctor's pictures of his family and telling him how cute his kids were. 

When my aunt and uncle called on the phone, Great Grams talked completely normally. Anyone who didn't understand her condition could easily conclude there was nothing wrong with her. Sometimes they assume all is going very well based on these conversations. 

Often when we went to visit someone, Great Grams held normal conversations, way into her illness. I remember, on one of her later hospitalizations, hearing her tell an aide how beautiful she was and how pretty her sweater was -- then telling us that the aide was a horrible person plotting against her.

For much of her time in Alzheimer's, Great Grams could travel and be fine on a trip. However, total breakdowns seemed to happen when we returned home. You would think that returning to the familiar would have made things better, but they always made things worse. Understanding and accepting Alzheimer's behavior is very difficult. Even when you see it over and over.

…. Alzheimer's patients can "rally the forces", meaning they can work exhaustively at trying to "keep up" and interact. This can continue until late stages of the disease. Alzheimer's patients are somehow successful at continuing to do this. HOWEVER, this exertion of attention is SO EXHAUSTING to Alzheimer’s patients, that they basically are having a breakdown afterwards. 

Since Alzheimer's is really a memory problem and not a social problem for most of its course, patients often realize that they are having a major problem, and they use their social skills to cover it up. But, this is so tiring, that it uses up all their resources, and those who are with them afterwards, often see the sad effects of these exhausting efforts…

Only very, very late in her illness, did Great Grams begin to lose the ability to "cover it up"…

Only when Great Grams had progressed to the final stages of Alzheimer's was she no longer able to present a normal-appearing front to others -- outsiders.

The ability to act differently for others, shows that the Alzheimer’s patient maintains social skills. When with the caregiver alone Alzheimer's patients feels safe, and don't have to exhaust themselves to present themselves as they would like to be seen.

A Bold but Sensible Proposal! Part 1 of 2 parts

Let’s utilize the buildings and homes in the suburbs soon to be vacated by the people whose families have grown and dispersed. Let’s renovate and rebuild them as shared and assisted living for us as we age. Let’s use the existing Municipal Agencies to finance and service the needs of the new people occupying them in the same manner and with the same economy they did in building the original family oriented suburbs as they have existed.

A very interesting article ran in the Mpls Star and Tribune 9-10-10 entitled: Suburbs are showing their age Click on it to go there and read it. I found it significant. Although of my home area, Minneapolis, it fits the profile of Anywhere USA.

It describes the vast Suburban Metamorphosis rapidly unfolding before our very eyes. It highlights one of the many ingredients we face aging in and aging as a culture. It underscores our need to renovate the community service capability one of the many factors that led to the growth of each of the suburban living models.

Cost of living coupled with the ease of transportation facilitated by automobile and the roadway system improved and expanded after WWII started the change. Following on its heals services within the community were designed to attract and provide for the demographic character of the population needed to fill the space in the suburbs. The population came in droves generating yet further demographic need. It was self actualizing

The suburbs attracted working families. Their attraction was to geographical room in which to live, on which was built affordable single family homes to live in. This generated families with little children. Children required parks, playgrounds, safe neighborhoods and good schools. The suburbs generated these

The living style they serviced were these many families with children the service geared to the community needs of the many children in it.  As time moved along the children have been educated, they have had children, the same needs proliferated and the suburbs multiplied bounded finally with exurbs.

Within this same period of time a distinct change occurred with the demographic make up of the society. We have all become older. We have reached that time where the older percentage of us is growing in number and the younger percentage of us is reducing in number.

This has changed the suburb. There are far less children with need and far more seniors with needs unmet. If we choose to continue to occupy the communities in a territorial spread rather than in a centralized nucleus as once our communities were it is important for us to provide for the needs of the population now occupying each of these parts.

If we do not the suburbs will atrophy their infrastructure decay and we will need to rebuild the centers of our communities to accommodate the people leaving the suburbs because the communities neither serve them nor can they afford to maintain those communities.

If we act now to stem the deterioration and utilize the existing built and paid for infrastructure, operating out of an existing system of municipal services with established living areas and people living in them, we can both save and serve the people there. Those people so served will then have cause to stay there and continue paying the lesser cost of the physical model they occupy.

A Bold but Sensible Proposal! Part 2 of 2 parts

The first part of this post began with the following two paragraphs

Let’s utilize the buildings and homes in the suburbs soon to be vacated by the people whose families have grown and dispersed. Let’s renovate and rebuild them as shared and assisted living for us as we age. Let’s use the existing Municipal Agencies to finance and service the needs of the new people occupying them in the same manner and with the same economy they did in building the original family oriented suburbs as they have existed.

A very interesting article ran in the Mpls Star and Tribune 9-10-10 entitled: Suburbs are showing their age Click on it to go there and read it. I found it significant. Although of my home area, Minneapolis, it fits the profile of Anywhere USA.

Those of us in the World of Alzheimer’s Disease provide the perfect template showing the group, the need and the service required. We as a group are growing into a state of vulnerability, of having needs that we cannot ourselves provide as our condition worsens.

A great number of us can take care of ourselves with a reduced need of caretaker help.

But as time passes are needs of care grow. In the same way the number of us grows. More people are aging into the area of risk in which the number with the disease increases exponentially both with number and need.

This alone is further exacerbated as the Baby Boomer population is reaching the same area of risk as they come into their seniority.

Currently the cost of any kind of institutional or hired care is prohibitive. There is no Government Aid available for the greater number of us who have enough not to qualify for Medicaid, the only available program of Government Aid. Should we pay down or give our property away to get down to the financially qualifying level, our spouses, who have the continued obligation and must pay our keep if they continue with funds above the level of financial qualification. If they pay their property down to pay your fare for care that leaves them with nothing to live on not that long after that time you qualify and go into the Home.

If we start over at the ground level as we did at the ground level with the postwar WWII period; we could manage this vast change that has occurred with greater economy. We could avoid paying the confiscatory rates presently imposed. We could do this by utilizing at the ground level the in and paid for infrastructure. We could then service the needy by those of the community yet able to provide their own care. This in turn would provide them employment at a local level and act to enhance their quality of life.

After WWII whether it was by accident or design, we as a country made phenomenal investment in building the Interstate Highway System. This changed the character of the country more than any other improvement or capital expenditure ever did. It produced greater innovation than the steam engine, the railroads, the entire post revolutionary Westward Expansion.

The foresight of it was mind boggling though not above criticism. It was waiting for Wilson the former GM CEO who as Eisenhower's Secretary of Defense built it under the guise of National Defense. It gave a use for the auto returned to mass production in Detroit. Soon with all families aboard these cars, obsolescent as they were, could be seen cavorting all over the Interstate System .

The Interstate spawned Howard Johnson’s McDonalds, Holiday Inns and similar business enterprise throughout the System. Suburban sprawl herniated around the many junctions of it. So many innovations engulfed society in these heady ‘50’s that capped the depression cycle from which we were extricated by WWII.

Our world changed from a series of centers to an amalgamation of sprawl. From this change the economy prospered over a period having no equal in history. Whether it enhanced a demographic of young working growing families or was the result of the growth and change gets somewhat confused in its sorting. What is true of it is that all of this churning produced our overall growth in personal worth and ability to do more for our quality of life and pay for more services to further enhance that.

We are at another such watershed time. We have crested have reached the point the pool can no longer hold us. Like water at a watershed it ours to choose the direction the water drains from this level. After the war the powers chose further investment as going into postwar retrenchment. As a result we prospered and our changed cultural demographic was served.

We are at the same decision point and via the last election it would seem we have opted to retrench after the profits were taken from the fiscal holiday of the last 30 years.

We can opt to renovate the infrastructure with the same postwar passion we saw in the ‘50’s. To do so would revitalize us economically. Better yet it could produce the economic cost saving of working with existing infrastructure renovating that to serve the population now in its service boundaries.

Does this make sense or does it make sense.   

How Beautiful to Live the Fullness of Love

Paula Spahn wrote an article in the New Old Age Column of the New York Times entitled On Home Aides and Hidden Grief that was insightful as such as to prompt the following thought in me. Read it on my Archive by clicking on the title to go there.

In the article it is noted that Home Care-givers are admonished to be professional and not get too involved. I ask: "Why hold back, Why be cautious about being close? Be professional they say! Is being professional the same as being cold, insensitive, given to stand off." This is the antithesis of Care-giving, one of the most important gifts of being a human.

To care, but not too much, contradict one another, only creating and endless conundrum.

I am not a Care-giver I am a Care-given. I have Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Kicking and screaming as a formerly independent, a person whose mode is described by comments “I'll do it myself: I’ll take care of myself: Thank anyway,”

I am with AD learning the meaning of vulnerability. What is that? The need I now know I have of others. I am giving in and the love I feel, not theirs, mine, is immeasurable, and it is so new.

I see the love of them; I feel the love of them; that opens a door to me to love where my stiff upper lip kept my loving in and kept others’ love out in my past.

My thoughts as I read this insightful essay were this:

Why hold back, Why be cautious about being close? Be professional they say! Is being professional the same as being cold, insensitive, given to stand off. This is the antithesis of Care-giving, one of the most important gifts of being a human.

To care, but not too much, contradict one another, only creating and endless conundrum.

I am not a Care-giver I am a Care-given. I have Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Kicking and screaming as a formerly independent, a person whose mode is described by comments “I'll do it myself: I’ll take care of myself: Thank anyway,”

I am with AD learning the meaning of vulnerability. What is that? The need I now know I have of others. I am giving in and the love I feel, not theirs, mine, is immeasurable, and it is so new.

I see the love of them; I feel the love of them; that opens a door to me to love where my stiff upper lip kept my loving in and kept others’ love out in my past.

So suffering grief as a result if you open yourself and immerse your self in the love of giving, is that so bad?

As my wife deeply grieved the death of her dad I told her "How beautiful to have that grief. It is in equal measure to the love you had for one another. Yours was a lifetime having that love. How wonderful. Treasure that and embrace your grief.”

Care-givers immerse themselves in the nectar of life as they give the love that abounds in their undertaking.


My brother Peter learned this love many years ago and practiced ever since. He is the inveterate Caregiver. I've only learned this in my dotage, because of AD the Sacred Gift with which I have been blessed. Peter has been one of my Caregivers and needs this acknowledgment.

Misdirection needs Re-Direction in the Support of Alzheimer's Disease

I have been writing much about the potential of the brain to regenerate. As I understand it the brain has the capability to form new pathways and generate new brain cells. The scientists call this property the brain’s plasticity.

Recently I asked the question on this Blog, can the same regeneration occur in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) as it does with Stroke. I can find no answer. So this leaves my oft posed question “Why not?” If it works with strokes why does it not work with AD?

The National Institute of health determined there is no correlation between the best practices so called, that of taking your medication, eating right, exercising and stimulating your brain, and the slowing of the progression of damage with AD. This turned my crank in a serious way.

I wrote of this in April of this year. Click on Medicine in America I have taken the following excerpt from my blog post of 4-30-10. It reads as follows:

In the blog post I was reporting on two articles I posted in my Archive:

1. NIH Panel Finds Insufficient Evidence to Support Preventive Measures for Alzheimer's Disease
2. Lies, Damn Lies and Medical Research

Click on their hypertext titles to go there and read them.

The Damn Lies article cited above sets out in part:

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

As reprehensible as many industry practices are, I believe the behavior of much of the medical profession is even more culpable.

I again dealt with the issue in my blog post: Neurogenesis: How to Change Your Brain. In the blog I stated in part:

Medicine, Science and recently the National Institute of Health (NIH) have come out to say this is not true because it has not been proven. The Best Practices do not prolong ones time in Early Stage. The deterioration of the brain in Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) progresses unremittingly. In pronouncing this the NIH stated although interesting and difficult to dispel, the findings as they relate to the positive affect of the Best Practices have not been scientifically proven.

Proof in Science, Medicine and Philosophy seem to follow this process. If it’s anecdotal it should be disregarded. Anecdotal they define as: specific instance or instances having similarity, not of sufficient number or consequence to be suggestive of anything more than interesting.

To constitute truth it must rise above anecdotal to theory, then hypothesis, and then principle. If principle, namely proven to be so, more than hypothesized or theorized than it is acceptable as truth to doctors, scientists and philosophers.

In Medicine and Science it is apparently taken a step further than the above. If it is not principle it is not true, or so it seems, as we hear the pronouncements of the NIH.

In this past week I attended the annual meeting of our AD Association’s Annual Meeting. They had as their featured speaker a former member of the National Institute of Health (NIH) and an active current advisor on AD. He claims he was the one to organize the National Association of AD to get outside support for funding studies for finding a cure for AD. There was nothing being done at the time.

He gave a good history of the development of research and the companion development of AD organization throughout the U.S. This part was excellent.

He then acknowledged research has really gone nowhere in finding a cure. He finished his talk saying because of the impending AD calamity to soon to come in the U.S. we need to accelerate research to find a cure and accelerate fund raising effort to support that research.

In the course of this he said “the only way of stemming the coming onslaught of AD was through science.”

My crank was turned double much on this statement. I rose to comment after the talk. “I have AD, Now! How does this help me to find a cure after I am dead? Why can’t the AD effort in the U.S. run on two tracks, one for cure the other to attend to us not now getting much attention.”

I went though my all too familiar litany. Prolong our stay in Early Stage AD, save us and save the country the cost of caring for us. Find ways of Economy in Care, as turn the blind eye to the continually escalating Cost of Care as is now done. I covered the waterfront finishing saying there are other answers outside of science that can aid folks with and affected by AD, chances that offer more than just comfort care, that could diminish the catastrophe that AD is soon to cause. We need to concentrate on this in equal measure to that now given raising funds to find a cure.

I don’t know why??? Why are their blinders in the efforts to confront AD that limit the AD effort to find medicines to cure and overlook programs to care. I don’t get it?

The NIH did us such a disservice in its arrogant blind sided determination that there is nothing that will help. They made a negative into a positive saying in negative terms “There is nothing that will prolong the process of deterioration caused by AD.”

This is not so!!!

Two articles are worth reviewing. They are:

1. Silent Vascular Disease Accompanies Cognitive Decline in Healthy Aging
2. The Nuns of Mankato, Regeneration

I have posted each article in my Archive. Click on the article to read it at the source or Archive to read it both of them there.

I have ordered two books and a sample of the third listed below to dig into this further. If anyone reading this blog has source or reference on the issue or view and advice please comment or email me at the address shown on the side bar of the blog, the one that recites general information.

1. The Mind's Eye
2. A User's Guide to the Brain:
3. The Mind and the Brain

I have hypertext’d their amazon.com listings. These books are available in Kindle as well as HardCopy.

Minds Eye was reviewed in the Sunday NYT on 11-14-10. Reading that paper drew my attention for my topic today.