Alzheimer's can FTFO...

I'm kind of sad today. I'm sure part of it is that I'm in the "Groundhog Day" part of the summer, where every day is 97*, killingly humid, no rain in the forecast, and I'm at the midpoint of the semester, when I usually run out of steam.

But I have another reason.

I found out last night that a family friend - a retired minister - is suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer's. My parents hadn't seen him and his wife in a while, and they saw them somewhere and got to talking. The wife passed on that she was taking her husband around to all the churches he had either pastored or done an interim ministry in (the implication being, "for one last visit"). My dad said that the man's long-term memory was OK, but some of the things he said didn't make sense 100%, and his short-term memory was pretty much gone. (He remembered my parents - having first met them some 15 years ago - but he couldn't remember what he had ordered at the restaurant they were eating in).

Alzheimer's is such a devilish disease. In its worst stages, it steals the very essence of the person - they "check out" long before their body does. In some cases the person gets fearful (I've seen that with someone I know from here who developed the disease; she is now in a nursing home up where her children live - her disease progressed very fast) or they get hostile. And that makes it incredibly hard for the caregiver. I can't imagine how hard it would be to keep caring for a spouse that didn't remember me, that treated me like one of the "help," or that demanded to know why I was there.

I wonder if people with Alzheimer's realize it. I suppose in the early stages they do. And I have to admit - the only situation I can see where I would, personally, to myself, justify the "escape hatch" (suicide) would be in a case where I had been diagnosed with that disease, there was really no treatment, and all I had to look forward to was a long slide into unknowing. It would be very hard not to make the decision to forcibly "check out" physically before my brain had a chance to.

And I have to admit, Alzheimer's is one of my fears. Probably not a rational fear; there is no family history of it (my oldest relative made it to 101 and was still arguing lucidly with the nurses about his medications at the nursing home the day he died). And I do other things that are thought to be preventative - eating all those damn vegetables, for example. And exercising. And the fact that I'm fairly highly educated is supposed to be a preventative (though it didn't seem to help in the case of my family's friend).

But still, it's something I fear - having my personality and ability to care for myself stolen, becoming like a baby again.

And it makes me angry when I hear of someone's last years on this earth being stolen by it. Granted, the man I'm talking about seemed fairly happy (or so my parents related) and untroubled by the fact that he had the disease, but it still makes me angry - his wife said that he could no longer read the Bible because he couldn't follow the thread of it and would lose his place. And I know of other people who had fun retirements planned - and then didn't get to do a lot of the stuff, because they got the disease.

And I have to admit, I can't think of any disease I'd rather get Alzheimer's than. Not heart disease, not some autoimmune disorder (as miserable as they can be), not even cancer. Because with those diseases, while they do have mental and spiritual effects on you, it's not the same - not the same as having your memories and ability to function as a Homo sapiens stolen from you.

I hope they come up with a treatment (or better yet, cure) sometime for this. Or some kind of vaccination people can take that will keep them from ever getting it.