Dad’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s stayed hidden
from everyone until I took over the medical administration of my parents in 2015.
Once I found out, there was a deafening silence from most of the people I know
even though virtually all of them would add, “My _____ had Alzheimer’s…” But
there was little help, little beyond people sadly shaking heads. Or horror stories.
Lots of those. Even the ones who knew about the disease seemed to have received
a gag order from some Central Alzheimer’s Command and did little more than
mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started
this part of my blog…
“Dang! Where’d I
leave my keys? Have you seen my keys, honey?”
“Right where you
left them, dear!”
“Yeah, but where was THAT?”
When I forget
ANYTHING; a name, a face, a thing, a story idea, where I parked the car…for a
moment I feel a surge of horror as I think, “Am I getting Alzheimer’s?”
I’d like to say
such thoughts are uncommon, but I’d be lying. I can say I don’t live in FEAR of
Alzheimer’s; I can also say, though, that it’s a regular thought. Googling (Do
you realize that we turned a corporate name into a verb? Sort of eerie, don’t you think?) “fear
of Alzheimer’s”, I found this: “A Google search for the statistics
related to the risk of developing Alzheimer’s in your lifetime returns over 3
million results. You could pore over them and feed your fear, or you could
accept the reality that if you are 60 years old today, the odds of developing
Alzheimer’s are 4.8%, or in other words, there is a 95.2% chance that you
won’t develop the disease.”
My first thought, of
course, was “is that a general chance or does it include people whose parents
were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s?” Digging deeper: “If you have a first-degree
relative with Alzheimer’s disease (e.g. mother, father, sibling), your risk of
developing the illness is about two to three times higher than someone else
your age who doesn’t have a family member with the illness.”
OK – that seems straightforward.
That puts my chance of developing Alzheimer’s at (using 2.5 times as likely) at
12%. That’s three chances in twenty-five or about one in twelve; twelve and a
half to be precise. So, if we put twelve and a half people in a room, I will
have Alzheimer’s, eleven others will not, and there will be a grisly murder for
someone like Hercule Poirot to solve. Which, being in a writing state of mind,
puts an idea into my head…
Just so you know,
this has had a salutary effect on me because I see clearly that the WORST thing
that can happen to me is NOT Alzheimer’s. At any rate, as I was settling into
bed last night, I found myself wondering WHY I would fear being diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s. Remarkably quickly, it came down to the same fear I’ve had all my
life.
That fear was also
based on watching my dad, sometimes my mom, and a gigantic number of people
around me both family and not, drinking alcohol. I am a teetotaler, ie “pledged to total
abstinence from drink”. My biggest fear is losing control. I think that fear
also has to do with me avoiding using drugs, playing games and organized sports (if I lose,
I get angry and lose control of my emotions); and in general avoiding competitions.
I DO like biking, swimming, hiking, and camping and I initially started all of
them alone and they remain entirely NON-competitive, so I won’t lose control.
But Alzheimer’s?
My dad would tell Air Force sex stories to my sister, and me about the first
date he had with mom when she passed out drunk and he had to carry her home
where she threw up. And I remember a night my dad came home so wasted, he fell
off the three steps up to our house and I stayed up with him while my mom went
bowling. He begged God to kill him most of that time…
Loss of control is
a driving force in my life, and I DO have a temper. My grandfather never made
it past private after four years in the Army – because he’d get in a fight whenever
he DID get promoted and get busted back to private. Me and the rest of my
family have an interesting history of violence as well. I absolutely don’t want
to go spilling my guts to family and strangers in an Alzheimer’s driven bout of
reliving the past as if it was that moment. Do I have more dirt in my life than
the average person? No, but I’d rather the dirt that IS buried REMAINED buried
and not come spooging out of my mouth from an addled brain.
Advice for
preventing Alzheimer’s rides on observation that doing certain things can
reduce the chance of developing it, but none of that has the numerical veracity
of the chances of developing AD. “Better educational attainment; lifelong
participation in mentally stimulating work and leisure activities; exercise; Mediterranean-type diet (low in saturated fats and red
meats, more fish, vegetables and nuts, legumes and olive oil); improved sleep
can help prevent Alzheimer's and is linked to greater amyloid clearance from the
brain; greater social contact; make as many healthy lifestyle choices as you
can; while smoking,
obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and blood sugar, all increase
the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.”
So, last of all,
the Harvard article referenced below has this to say, BE AWARE OF THE SYMPTOMS OF
ALZHEIMER’S: “Forgetting where you parked your car can be annoying. If it
happens all the time, it can be disturbing, and you may worry that it's a sign
of a more serious condition. But don't panic. There's a difference
between normal age-related memory slips, such as forgetting where the car keys
are, and more serious signs of memory loss, such as forgetting what car keys
are used for.”
As strange as it
sounds, that is a comfort as well. I remember calls from Dad, frantic because he couldn’t
find his car keys – and then discovering them in the check replacement box. Forgetting
where and forgetting what for are quantum differences, but for me, they
are still scarier than being in a party of twelve and finding half a body in
the drawing room with Colonel Mustard and a pipe wrench…
Resource: https://sixtyandme.com/afraid-of-alzheimers-disease-heres-something-you-can-do-about-it/,
http://health.sunnybrook.ca/memory-doctor/get-alzheimers-parent-has-disease/,
https://www.etymonline.com/word/teetotal,
https://www.health.harvard.edu/alzheimers-and-dementia/what-can-you-do-to-avoid-alzheimers-disease
