Alzheimer's Story Published

 I got several comments on the below story. People are willing to talk about Alz or dementia - who has it in their family - but not about mental illness, which I write about for for the Doylestown-PA based newspaper.

Everyone I quoted in the story was very pleased with it.

Posted: Wednesday, June 24, 2015 12:15 am

 

By Ruth Z. Deming

She was a tiny woman with immense talents. She was a gardener, a baker and a beloved grandmother. 

Her family, with whom she lived, watched in horror as her personality began to change. She became aggressive and lost her power of speech. While she was baking her mouth-watering pecan rolls, her daughter barely stopped her from adding dish-washing liquid to the batter.

This happened many years ago. She was my grandmother, 84 years old. She knew something was wrong, but her doctor said there was nothing to be done. We reluctantly drove her to the assisted living facility, where she would spend the rest of her life. She lived to be 98.

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In many ways, my grandmother followed the arc of Alzheimer’s disease. Two-thirds of its 5.3 million American victims are women. It’s the sixth leading cause of death in America and gaining ground with the aging of the “baby boom generation,” according to Amanda Secor of the New York-based Alzheimer’s Foundation and its website (alzfdn.org).

And there’s no cure in sight. It’s frightening to realize that people will experience Alzheimer’s and other dementias in record numbers in the years to come. In 10 years, by 2025, it’s estimated that 7.1 million people will have the disease, an increase of 40 percent.

The good news is that June has been designated Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month. Walks have been held all across the country and the world to raise money and awareness of this disease, which robs people of their very identities. Imagine waking up in your own bed, looking around and wondering, “Where am I? Who am I? What am I to do?”

“Take the Purple Pledge,” proclaims the Chicago-based Alzheimer’s Association. Wearing purple, the way breast cancer awareness supporters wear pink, more than 600 communities held walks this past Sunday, “the longest day of the year” — the summer solstice, June 21. In the Philadelphia area, walks have been held since 1991.

“The longest day is how it often feels to a patient or caregiver for someone living with Alzheimer’s,” said Rachel Kaufman of Brandywine Senior Living at Dresher Estates, who works in Reflections, the memory care unit.

Who gets Alzheimer’s?

The list that no one wants to be on includes Ronald Reagan, Rita Hayworth, Glenn Campbell and Malcolm Young, lead guitarist for the Aussie-based band AC/DC. Young states in an Australian newspaper that he has “complete loss of short-term memory.” He is 62 years old.

“The genes you’ve inherited carry most of the risk, an identical-twin study shows,” according to an article on WebMD.com.

An international study of nearly 12,000 Swedish twin pairs, a fourth of them identical twins, finds that 80 percent of Alzheimer’s risk is genetic, findings reported in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

It appears that genetic influences outweigh environmental ones, said WebMD.

What this means is that close relatives of people with Alzheimer’s are at greater risk of getting the disease than people without such a relative. But you are not doomed to get it, said WebMd. “Genetic” does not mean “cast in stone.”

Family physician James T. Foxhall, MD, of North Willow Grove Family Medicine tells patients things they can do to perhaps help prevent the disease. “I recommend regular cardiovascular exercise, like walking, as the best way to prevent memory loss. I also recommend activities that stimulate the brain such as meeting new people, learning a new language or basically anything that causes a change in the normal routine.”

The Alzheimer’s Foundation echoes this on its website. In addition, stress should be managed. And depression should be treated, since elders with depression have higher rates of dementia. Be social. Eat sensibly and add vitamins C and E and folic acid.

Then you can sing, along with AC/DC: “Shake a leg shake your head / Shake a leg wake the dead / Shake a leg play to win.”

Ruth Z. Deming is a psychotherapist and founder/director of New Directions Support Group in Abington and Willow Grove. To view their programs and events, click www.newdirectionssupport.org or call 215-659-2366.