Fortyish is Fab

November 26, 2007

Alzheimer's Gets Ink

Recently, an acquaintance of mine, who is in her early forties, was commenting on her own forgetfulness. She jokingly said something like "I guess Alzheimer's is setting in! Won't be long now!"

Uh-oh. Where did these feelings come from? Although I don't know her well, I'm pretty sure she wasn't trying to be mean, so I (politely, I think) pointed out to her that many people suffer from this debilitating disease, including my own mother. Let's just say the ensuing discussion didn't go very well. And I don't think I need to develop a "thicker skin", by the way, or learn to take a joke. Grr.

Although I was perturbed at the way this woman said it, apparently, memory loss is quite common in your forties and fifties these days, and a book called Carved in Sand, by Cathryn Jakobson Ramin, has some pretty interesting information on the topic, as well as on Alzheimer's Disease. You can check out Salon.com's interview with the author in the article, The mind's missing pieces.

And also in the news, I found an interesting article in Time magazine--Is Alzheimer's a Form of Diabetes?. The magazine reports that American researchers claim they've found a link between insulin and Alzherimer's.

Posted by L.C. at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Filed under: Aging Parents | Health

November 08, 2007

Finding Something to Believe In

When I was about 13 years old, something happened in my church that nearly drove my mother crazy. That was the year that Catholics were able to begin receiving holy communion into our hands, rather than having it placed on our tongues by a priest. I'm not really sure why this bothered my mother so much, because she rarely attended Mass on Sundays, or any other day for that matter. I attended regularly since I was in the folk choir, and whenever I asked her to join me, she'd say: "No, you just go for the both of us."

The fact that she was so vocal about the communion change magnified the question (in my mind): why wouldn't she go to church with me? It all started to really get me down, and for a while I wondered if she believed at all, and if Mom would join me and my siblings in the great hereafter if she didn't straighten up her act and get her butt into a pew--fast. So I prayed for her and hoped for the best, and eventually I grew up and realized that just because she didn't practice her faith the way I did, didn't mean she was doing it wrong. And even if she didn't believe at the moment, maybe that was just all part of the journey.

This all came rushing back to me a few weeks ago, when I found this letter on Salon.com, from a man who's atheism was feeling shaky as he nears his forties and is starting to feel what many of us feel at this age--unquestionably mortal. The idea of not believing reminded me of those years with my mom, and of a few years in my own life when my faith faltered so much that I wasn't sure I would ever get it back.

When I was around 23, a friend of mine was killed in an accident. I went through the whole "no God would take an innocent young man for no reason" period, and I spent a year being angry with God. I have to say, it felt pretty crappy. Then one day, when I was meditating (I used to do yoga and sit in meditation a lot) I could have sworn I heard a little voice whisper "If you don't believe in me, then he's just dead--gone, and that's it. Can you really live with that?" I thought about it for a long time, and decided that I didn't want to believe that my friend, another childhood friend, and my beloved aunt were just dead, and that their spirits hadn't lived on. So that was the end of that, and I started to believe again. My faith didn't look like it did before all of this, but somehow, it felt a whole lot better to me. I guess you could say I figured out where my journey was taking me that day, and I found that even though the road had been bumpy, the destination was totally worth it.

Years after my own struggle, I sit here and think of my aging mother, falling deeper and deeper into Alzheimer's Disease. The nursing home staff once told me she loves to be wheeled into the activities room to hear a priest who visits the facility, and that although she is getting less and less responsive by the day, she seems very happy. She blows kisses at the nurses. She loves pudding and cookies and her loud roommate. And I remember that things seemed to change a lot for my mom around the time she had her third stroke. She called me and said: "My mother's here. I want to go with her." (Her mother died more than 40 years ago.) And I finally figured out that she doesn't struggle anymore; she just smiles and waits and dreams of a heaven where she'll meet her mother again. So I get this feeling that her journey towards figuring out life and God and happiness and lots of other stuff took her nearly 80 years, but that was okay. We get there when we get there.

Posted by L.C. at 05:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Filed under: Aging Parents | General 40ish

August 14, 2007

Walk for a Cure

Alzheimer's Disease is a brain disorder currently affecting 4.5 millions people in the U.S. alone. My mother is one of them.

If you would like to help join the fight against this devastating disease, check out The Alzheimer's Association Web site. There you'll find lots of information about the disease and about Memory Walk 2007, an event that will be held in cities across the country this fall, to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer's research.

February 28, 2007

Romancing the Rings

rings I came across it by accident, when I was searching through some vanity drawers. I'd been looking for the bracelet my husband gave me 12 years ago, at the birth of our son. I found the bracelet, but in the same box was an unexpected surprise: my mother's wedding ring. As I picked it out of the box and slipped it onto my finger, I felt a strange wave of emotion come over me. I sat and stared at the ring for a while, and ran my finger over the hole that was left when a tiny accent diamond fell out many years ago. The rest of the ring--a platinum band with a few small diamonds on it--was a little battered and nicked up, but intact.

I wore the ring around the house all day, and my husband joked that I shouldn't do it, because the ring had "bad juju." He said this, I suspect, because my mother and father's marriage was an unhappy one, ending in a bitter divorce after 30+ years of making each other miserable. They didn't speak for years, even through two of their kids' weddings. But then, something incredible happened. When my mother had a serious stroke, more than 10 years after their divorce, my father came to visit her. At first, the visits had a purpose: insurance papers to sign after a hurricane damaged the house they still jointly owned, and I think I recall a letter for her that had mistakenly been mailed to his address. After that, I believe he'd heard that a mutual friend died, and he came to her home to deliver the news. Then, although there were no "official" reasons for the visits, they continued. After she had a second stroke and became ill, he brought her meals (even cooked them for her) and checked on her daily. Those of us who had witnessed their horrible divorce were stunned: they had actually become friends.

So, now I have their wedding rings (Dad gave he his too, so I could have the set) and I don't know what to do with them. I don't want to wear them because the rings just seem too personal, and they still conjure up some of my own feelings about my parents' divorce. But leaving the rings in a drawer doesn't seem right either. As my father ages (81 last month) and my mother slips further into Alzheimer's each day, I search for a way to have them in my possession in a respectful way. I search. I ponder. And I don't know yet, how to honor the union that created me and my siblings, then fell apart, then got pieced back together. I take the rings out of a drawer sometimes and hold them and look at them, and they remind me that miracles can happen. But sometimes, those miracles take a long time to show up.

Posted by L.C. at 02:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Filed under: Aging Parents

December 28, 2006

I'll Be Home From Christmas

This month, I kept hearing that damned: I'll Be Home For Christmas. Okay, I shouldn't have said that. No offense to Perry Como, who does a lovely job with it. It's just that this is my mother's favorite Christmas song, and whenever I heard it this year, I thought of her.

I was home for Christmas this year, but my mother wasn't. She celebrated, to whatever degree she can celebrate, from her bed in a nursing home a few hundred miles away from me. Christmas, as do other holidays and special events, takes a back seat to the illness that controls most every aspect of her life: Alzheimer's Disease.

The problem is, we only know what we can see. She just can't tell us very much, and that's a horrible feeling. I have no idea what goes on in my mother's head, and whether or not she knew it was Christmas last weekend. My brother went to visit her two weeks weeks ago, when he was in Florida on business. He saw her the day he arrived, then returned again the next day after lunch, though he told her he'd tried to stop by in the morning (but was delayed). When he entered, she told him, "you're late." Apparently, some bits of conversation get through and stick with her. Just with you think you've lost her.

What does it feel like to live in her fog? Does she slip in and out? Does she always know what's going on around her, and perhaps just isn't able to communicate it to us? It's the mystery that keeps me up at night. And it's the mystery I'll never be able to solve.

Posted by L.C. at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Filed under: Aging Parents | General 40ish

October 09, 2006

Cheating Death

For the second time in a month, I'm writing about death. Well actually, today the topic of cheating death is on my mind.

About four years ago, my mother (then 74) had her first stroke. She'd had high blood pressure for more than 20 years, and had tried a series of medications with little success (or too many side effects). Her first stroke was serious, and two more strokes followed over the next two years. Add to that a heart problem and the onset of Alzheimer's disease, and it seemed that my mother was a time bomb waiting to explode. It wasn't a question of if. It became a question of when.

Nearly a year ago, as my mother was quicky deteriorating in an assisted living facility (in the full-care, Alzheimer's wing), her doctor called my sister and told her he would like for Mom to enter the Hospice program. He and Mom's neurologist felt she had about six months to live, perhaps a year if we were lucky. We proceeded with the paperwork and she was approved, then we moved her into a Hospice-participating facility. We sat back and waited, as we watched the wonderfully attentive Hospice nurses tend to Mom, preparing her (and preparing us) for the end.

Ten months later, we were still waiting. Then we got a call last week: "Your mother has improved so much, that we are recommending she be taken out of the Hospice program." After our collective "HUH?", my sister and I tried to determine how in the world this woman, who had been knocking on death's door for years, had managed to cheat death, again. She'd had a few hospital visits over the past few years when she wasn't expected to live through the week. But she just keeps on ticking and ticking.

Years ago, when my mother first became ill and was still able to communicate, she told me her secret, and it went something like this: "I won't die. Good, nice people die. I'm too fiesty to go." I assumed she was kidding, then I remembered how she'd been all her life, and fiesty was a great understatement. She was smart and funny and creative, but her difficult streak was a mile wide. She was quite proud to be called bitchy and grumpy and difficult, and just laughed when anyone would point out these traits. Once when she was still communicating, I told her I would fly down to visit her if she could behave for a few weeks. (The nursing home staff had told us she was being bossy and uncooperative at the time.) When I suggested the deal to her, she said "Well, I guess you won't be coming!" and hung up on me.

Is it true that only the good die young? Does a defiant, you-can't-take-me-that-easily attitude make the Angel of Death quiver in his boots and say "Okay. I'll be back in a few years"? I'm not sure. But somehow, my 90-pound, incoherent, ill mother has figured out how to stay alive for years beyond what her doctors and everyone else has expected. And for that, I think bitchiness deserves at least a bit of the credit.

September 16, 2006

Thoughts on Dying

Over dinner yesterday evening, my son and I were talking about dying. I was talking about my mother, who is 78, has Alzheimer's Disease (final stages), a heart condition, and has had three strokes. She is unable to communicate or take care of any of her own needs. She resides in a wonderful nursing home and is in hospice care. We're not sure when she will die, of course, but her doctors suspect it will be sometime in the next six months or so.

So, anyway, my son and I were talking about dying. He's nearly 12, and he understands that Grandma is dying and that although we may be sad when it happens, she's lived a long, good life. We have all been prepared for her to die for a while now. Then we talked about my Dad--a fairly healthy, 80-year-old man who still lives alone and drives and has some, but not any major, medical issues. He's two years older than my mother, yet, if he were to die I'd be pretty shocked and upset, although he has already lived past the average life expectancy for a male in the U.S. I think it comes down to what you expect. Life experience tells us that your grandparents die first, then your parents, then you and your siblings die. But of course, life isn't so predictable sometimes. And when people die out of the order in which we expect, it can throw us for quite the emotional loop.

I was twelve years old the first time someone in my life died. She was the younger sister of my close friend, and she was killed in a car accident when she was ten. We all cried at school, and it felt so strange to have her just not there. It was as if she just disappeared. I didn't think about the accident, I didn't think about her dying. She was just gone one day. I was 22 the next time a friend died. Another accident. I cried and screamed and pounded my fists on the ground and yelled at God. Then I wiped it from my mind a few weeks later, and tried not to think about it. It just hurt too much to remember him, and my mind just wouldn't let me go there for a long time. When I finally thought about it, a few years later, I allowed myself to truly grieve. I wept for weeks.

I always thought I wanted to die when I was old--really old, like 100. Now, it doesn't seem to matter anymore. As I watch my mother deteriorate, life and death take on new meanings. I'm still just trying to decipher what those meanings are to me.

August 22, 2006

Adventures in Dreamland

I've been having some really funky dreams lately. In one, my husband and his friend were having a wrestling match at church (my dh wrestled in high school) and his friend broke my husband's leg. He was rushed to the hospital, and I found my son curled up in a ball on the floor of the church youth room crying "Brian broke Daddy's leg." Hmm. Not sure what all that meant.

So anyway, today I had a headache and laid down in the middle of the day for a short nap. When the dream began, my mother and I were shopping at a large mall. My mother was not as she is today--old, frail, suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia, unable to communicate, walk, or eat unassisted. She was as I remember her from ten years ago--taller than I am, vibrant red hair, feisty (okay, bitchy) and smart. We shopped for what seemed like hours, and she told me everything I tried on was too long for me, hideously ugly, and too expensive. It was just like old times.

I was enjoying the dream, then, all of the sudden, it started to change. My mother told me she was beginning to get tired, and that we'd have to stop so she could rest. Shortly after that, she told me she could no longer walk, and that I'd have to get her a wheelchair. I did, and began pushing her around the mall, still chatting with her, trying to get her to go back to the way she was earlier in the dream. But the joking and the sarcasm and the complaining about my clothing choices began to fizzle out, until she was finally not speaking at all. Little by little, she slipped down into her wheelchair, almost disappearing bit by bit before my eyes. An accelerated version of what has occurred over the past three years in real life.

When the dream began, I was happy that my subconscious had found a happy place to visit. A place that allowed me to remember what it was like to be the adult daughter of a healthy woman with a big mouth and even bigger opinions. But it ended much like things are for me today: my life as the adult daughter of a woman who is succumbing to a terrible disease. And while I accept that this is the place where we are now, it was nice to visit the past for a little while. Even if it was in my dreams.

March 03, 2006

Happy Birthday Mom

Today is my mother's 78th birthday. But she doesn't know it. My mother is in the final stages of Alzheimer's Disease, and she doesn't know the year, my name, her name, or where she lives.

Her life is lived inside a very nice, sterile nursing home in Florida. She can't walk anymore, but still has pretty good use of her arms. She can't form sentences, but she can say a few words here and there, and they're sometimes even pertinent to whatever conversation is going on around her. But she can't eat on her own, bathe herself, or tell anyone if she's sleepy or hungry or missing someone or if something hurts.

A lot of people say she doesn't have much of a life right now. They say, in as kind a way as possible, that she'd be better off dead. They just see her pale, tiny body, the vacant look in her eyes, and her inability to function on her own, and think she has no reason to live anymore. But they haven't seen the look on her face when I visit her. Or the way she scrunches up her face in distaste, when I give her a sip of my Diet Coke. And they don't see her eyes fill up with tears when I tell her I have to leave.

I wish they could see all the things I can see. Then they might not say that anymore.

Posted by L.C. at 01:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack
Filed under: Aging Parents

Fortyish is Fab

Having a cool, hip, and fabulous decade

November 26, 2007

Alzheimer's Gets Ink

November 08, 2007

Finding Something to Believe In

August 14, 2007

Walk for a Cure

February 28, 2007

Romancing the Rings

December 28, 2006

I'll Be Home From Christmas

October 09, 2006

Cheating Death

September 16, 2006

Thoughts on Dying

August 22, 2006

Adventures in Dreamland

March 03, 2006

Happy Birthday Mom

Driver's Seat

Recent Posts

Search

Post Categories

Archives By Month

Subscribe

Sites I Like

etcetera