GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…Alzheimer’s #36: Does It Even AFFECT Me Now That Dad Is Gone?

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…

The weird thing is that Alzheimer’s still affects me even two years after Dad passed.

“How the heck can that be?!?!?” you blurt.

Well then, how about the Academy Award Oscar statuette for Best Actor? That went to Anthony Hopkins. For playing a man who “…refuses all assistance from his daughter as he ages. As he tries to make sense of his changing circumstances, he begins to doubt his loved ones, his own mind and even the fabric of his reality.” It’s a very pretty way of saying that he has Alzheimer’s. In fact, the Wikipedia entry as well as IMDb carefully don’t mention anything about Alzheimer’s – they talk coyly about “progressing memory loss” and “He has dementia and constantly forgets important life events and where things are around his flat, including his watch, despite the fact that he regularly hides it in the same place…he believes his recent caretaker stole his watch and that he will never move out of his flat. He doesn't recall his daughter’s divorce...[she] tells him that if he keeps refusing to have a carer, she will have to move him into a nursing home…”

OK, with the carful exclusion of the “A” word (I suppose it’s a French-British film, and their elevated manners don’t publicly mention such gauche things in polite company), using the words “memory loss” and “dementia”.

Wikipedia defines dementia: “a set of symptoms caused by some sort of brain damage, usually brought on by disease, though it can also result from injury…increase in problems with memory, thinking, and behavior…eventually affecting the ability of a person to do what we would consider everyday activities…emotional problems, difficulties with language, and decreased motivation…change [in] a person’s usual mental functioning…faster than what we would expect in normal aging. In 2013, dementia was reclassified as a major neurocognitive disorder, with varying degrees of severity, and with all KINDS of causes.”

Wikipedia defines Alzheimer’s as: “a neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and progressively worsens…the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia…common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events…As it advances…problems with language, disorientation, mood swings, loss of motivation, self-neglect, and behavioral issues…withdrawal from family and society…eventually, bodily functions are lost, speed of progression varies…typical life expectancy following diagnosis is three to nine years.[7][11]

But we don’t got no manners here in the Colonies! The story is about a man in the middle to late stages of Alzheimer’s. But for some reason, the Brits and French can’t mention that – as if by whispering around it and giving it a sort of non-descript, generic name like “dementia”, they can pretend it’s an unknown, unexplainable thing, so they don’t have to really deal with it…I don’t know if the “A” word is ever used (I haven’t seen the movie yet…and may not EVER. I lived through it once; watching in Technicolor with all the breaks cut out may be more than I can handle.)

At any rate, it seems that even though I should be “done with it”, I’m not, and the startling win by Anthony Hopkins over Chadwick Boseman shows exactly how much Alzheimer’s is on the mind of an aging population that STILL can’t bring themselves to talk about without tippy-toeing around.

I find that it inexplicably makes me angry, but still not as angry as the disease makes me…

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