The elderly doctor sitting in for my husband’s young radiation oncologist knew what we needed to hear: “Pancreatic cancer likes to come back early if it’s going to come back. The longer it’s gone, the less chance you’ll see it again. By two years, there is very little likelihood it will return.”
Suddenly, we had a signpost.
A Mile Marker in the Dark Read More »
My mother stood at the edge of dementia, a wide and terrifying river. She turned around, glancing back at me with her blue eyes sparkling, her arms outstretched. And then she waded in. I could not reach her in time to keep her safely on shore.
In the early stages, there were days of clarity when Maman would lift her face to the sun, wave in recognition to those of us she’d left on shore, beckoning us to join her. But it was not long before swift currents ensnared her, taking her farther and farther away. Her emotions and memories swirled menacingly as time and place no longer anchored her. She would cry out, “What is happening to me?”
Many people are afraid of developing dementia, which is increasingly common as we live ever longer. I have a compelling reason to harbor that fear.
My paternal grandmother developed dementia in her early sixties. The diagnosis was made without any of today’s imaging and biomarker techniques, but the course of her decline, it’s clear in retrospect, was typical for Alzheimer’s. Luckily, she never lost her sweetness or her Southern-ness: she remained hospitable and cheerful to the end, politely hiding her pills under her linen napkin. One afternoon during a drive through the rural South, she kept promising us that the White Cliffs of Dover were just over the next hill!
My Family History of Dementia Read More »
One of the first house calls I made during my internal medicine residency many years ago was to visit Mr. R: a 70-year-old veteran, retired electrician, devoted grandfather, and church volunteer who’d shown signs of memory loss for six years. His forgetfulness was initially dismissed as “senior moments.” Then he forgot his wife’s birthday—something he’d never done in 40 years.
The turning point came when he got lost after picking up his grandson from school. They were finally found two hours away, where a flustered Mr. R had been driving in circles. Taking away his car keys was traumatic, and subsequent memory testing confirmed a probable diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.
A Disease with Two Victims Read More »
When you were days from
Dying
In that hospital bed
A woman came to talk to me
I knew that drill
I recognized the soft approach
On fancy occasions, I wear a topaz ring—a large, pale-yellow gem in fine filigree setting. My paternal grandmother had purchased this ring for herself. I, being the oldest grandchild and also sharing her birth month, received this treasure as a young adult.
Grandma Fogarty had died when I was only five. When I was young, I remember waking up after naps at her house to find M&M’s waiting for me on the bedside table in a small plastic medicine cup. She was quiet and kind. I vividly remember her wake, in a dim room with plush red carpet and fancy furniture. A crowd of solemn-looking adults dwarfed me. I recall a shiny wooden casket with a satin lining and kneeling to pray in front of her lifeless body. Her face was waxy, and her hands were wrapped around a rosary.
(This story arose from a prompt to write a brief memoir inspired by an excerpt from a poem. The excerpt I chose, from Hafizah Augustus Geter’s poem “Paula,” was “a storm suddenly opens its jaw.”)
The luncheon started innocently enough. My friends and I were talking about indisposed spouses, some temporarily, others more seriously—like milk that had started to spoil but was still potable. Mine was heading closer toward curdled each day, but in small increments. Even so, thoughts of the future were harder to entertain.
Grandma was famous in our family for her cinnamon buns. Born in 1900, she was of the age of never following a recipe. My sister and I would ask her how to make cinnamon buns, and all we got was “watch me.” We wish we had watched more closely and taken notes.
When Grandma announced she was moving to assisted living, we were surprised, as she appeared to still have good health other than somewhat weak legs and poor hearing. Her cognition seemed fine, and we never worried about her living alone. But now in her eighties, her older siblings had passed, and her youngest sister lived four hours away. So when she chose a group home owned by a great-niece, we thought all would be well.
Grandma’s Cinnamon Buns Read More »
“I don’t want to live with this,” read a note we found afterward. “Just let me die.”
At the time he wrote the note, Dad had recently been diagnosed with cognitive impairment, often a precursor to Alzheimer’s; years earlier, his uncle had suffered from what was then called “senile dementia.”
“KCE 357 to the Jerico Fire Department,” says the dispatch radio at our community’s volunteer fire department. I volunteer here as both an emergency medical technician (EMT) and a chaplain; I’m also the full-time pastor of an Episcopal congregation.
“Ambulance needed at 45 Lilac Court for the unresponsive person, possible cardiac arrest.”
This is a high-priority call, albeit one that is common in our small town.
I hop into my car, equipped with an orange nylon “jump kit” of medical supplies, and head for 45 Lilac Court, ready to begin treating the patient before the fire-department ambulance arrives.
Sometimes dementia comes barging in the front door; other times, more stealthily, it comes tip-toeing in the back. My mom’s Alzheimer’s came in through the back end of things, because it involved picking her up for a potentially life-saving colonoscopy, and if anything signifies the back end of things, it’s a colonoscopy! I told her I’d leave my house at 8 a.m. to pick her up, but she called me at 8 p.m. the night before, asking why I hadn’t called. This episode was the conduit for her moving in with my husband and me. She stayed here for her remaining five years.
A Knock on the Door Read More »
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