Memory loss is on our minds...or maybe not

Memory loss, dementia, Alzheimer’s are on the minds of a lot of middle-agers these days…or maybe not. ;-)

If individuals aren’t aware of their own weakening memory, they have someone in their lives who is noticeably struggling with it.

It’s been 12 years since my mother began her own transition away from this universe and us.

We don’t really know if these diseases are laced genetically through our family since both sets of grandparents and many aunts and uncles died too young. Yet, one aunt on my father’s side did declined into dementia before dying so it has appeared on both sides of our family.

When my mother started to show signs of dementia, my younger brother and I went to a workshop about caring for those with memory loss. Some 20 people had gathered around a large library table when the nurse conducting the workshop settled in and announced, “You don’t have it.”  Paraphrasing her: We spend too much time trying to multi-task when we can still really one do one thing well at a time. Something has to get lost somewhere along the way when we try to do too much at once.

The collective sigh of relief at that table must have disturbed other programming for a moment that evening.

Later during a break, my then 40-something brother admitted that he’d lost the Windex ™ one day. He’d taken a break to get a cold drink and then couldn’t find the bottle so he could get back to work. It drove him crazy. He was sure dementia was already setting in. He found it later, right where he’d left it…in the refrigerator. TIP: It does clean better when chilled (Just kidding but feel free to use this excuse if the opportunity arises).

I had stepped away from teaching for a period of time because I lost my train of thought in front of classes and was sure I shouldn’t be teaching if I couldn’t remember the subject matter --- curse you Menopause!

It’s said that it’s OK if you can’t find your keys but you’re in trouble if you find then and don’t know what they are for.

So far so good on the keys thing but what are those furry, purring balls that keep running around my house? Do they belong here or should I call an exterminator? What’s an exterminator again?

I know my brother and I aren't alone. Share your stories in the comments section below.

The notorious no-show friend

"We must work on getting together this year," demanded a friend during an once-a-year phone call on the eve of 2016.

By that, I thought, you mean I must do all of the work. I said aloud that I was skeptical about it ever happening.

"Oh but I really want to see you. We must make this happen. We'll make it a project for 2000-and-16," my friend replied.

This is a notorious no-show friend. One can invest in airline tickets, show up at vacation spots, get stuck in a blizzard on the way to a meeting only to get a extremely last minute bailing call.

To compound the irritation, the explanation is always urgent and involves me in some way.

"You'll never believe this but since you're a lawyer, I know you'll understand...," 

"Just my luck, but since you're a writer, you'll understand how this can happen," 

"I can't believe it either but since you breath air...."

I have a plan though. Once my friend sends me proof of arrival at said destination, I will dig out my suitcase, consider what I might want to pack, run a few last minute errands, ask for additional proof of arrival and then gas up the car...maybe. ;-)

An author  interviewed on NPR (I don't remember who and I can't find a reference) had catapulted a recurring protagonist of his novels into the character's 60s. It was a time, the character decided to "decommission" friends who no longer "brought anything to his table" and for whom the character could offer nothing in return.

Decommission, downsize, de-friend, unlink, block, ignore... Sometimes it's just time to say "enough" and let go.




I know I'm not alone in this experience. Share your stories in the comments section below.

"I will live"

On New Year's Eve, I got a "sad and bad" email from my sister-in-law. Her doctor had diagnosed Stage 2 breast cancer. Surgery, chemotherapy and radiation will kick off 2016 for her. Still, she wished us all a "Happy New Year" and declared, "I will live."

In 2015, another sister-in-law battled a cancer similar to my own and won. In 2014, a cousin beat breast cancer, following in her sister's footsteps of more than a decade before. The same year my mother's tumor proved to be benign, my father lost his life to the disease.

While we all tend to agree that cancer is everywhere, until it happens to you or a loved one, invincibility remains in tack. Sharing a chemo suite with 12 regulars every other week for four months submersed me in the middle earth that is Cancer World. It consumed 2008 for me. I have no memories of that year that aren't directly tied to my illness. It has given me my superhuman sensitivity to diagnoses suffered by others and appreciation for the life lessons learned in the oddest most unexpected ways.

Today, I'm thinking about my sister-in-law who is just beginning her fight and those who have won and lost their cancer battles. 

Below is an article about one of my own cancer challenges published in 2008. I always knew I would survive. I never considered any alternative. But my hair!


I know I'm not alone. Share your stories in the comments section below.

 
October 2008

(published in 2008)
I'm beautifully bald --- but not by choice --- by chemotherapy.

My fiancé has gone bald as well --- by choice. He surfed the BBC (Bald By Choice) web sites to pick up shaving tips when he decided he was going to go bald in support of my then pending hairlessness.

In May, I had a cancerous tumor removed and am now in chemotherapy for what I and my family and friends hope is a preventative measure --- to make sure no covert cells are hiding out planning to organize into another tumor. 

Still, like the nearly 1.5 million other new cancer cases in 2008, according to the American Cancer Society, I was destined to confront baldness.

To go publicly bald, wear a wig or get a hat has occupied more of my time than coming to terms with the toxic chemicals running through my bloodstream. I will admit my shiny white bob seemed to be one of my very few vanity points.

And yet, when the time came and the hair started falling out and kept falling out, I ultimately chose to go bald. I did so because of those who have gone before me.

I have been fortunate to have known or witnessed others who made the decision that their loss of hair, a limb, a breast has become another life process and nothing to hide. By chance and certainly unwelcome, cancer and all that comes with it must be confronted so that they could move forward in their lives just like everyone else.

"Nothing to hide," I believe my brave predecessors must have said to themselves, and something for all of the rest of us to accept and understand. So while I love hats as accessories, it struck me that on my bald head, they and wigs would become florescent arrows flashing the message, "hiding baldness, hiding baldness." That seemed like avoidance rather than awareness to me.

My inspiration also comes from the late Tony Snow, former White House Press Secretary, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Pope John Paul II.

Snow and Specter worked throughout their recent battles with cancer; one losing his struggle, the other winning. The ever impeccable and candid Snow was no less in his treatment of the subject with the media. As a result, we were witness to an honest battle not unlike that many private citizens are experiencing every day.

Specter, who is on the winning side at this point, recently published the book "Never Give In: Battling Cancer in the Senate" about working through a re occurrence of brain cancer. He said, and I'm paraphrasing here, he wanted people to understand the effects of his illness. 

Likewise, the late Pope John Paul II is reported to have told his staff that he did not want to hide what was happening to him as he began to fail. He wanted the world to understand that dying was a natural part of the life process. 

And so I've put away the curling iron, the hair dryer, my brush and comb, and shaved off the few wisps of hair left behind. I'm not looking in mirrors much and air conditioning makes my head shiver more than my shoulders ever have. I really think I can feel the heat escaping out of my head.

Since I'm on the inside looking out, I forget that I'm presenting a bald head to the rest of the world. 
Still, those with whom I interact do so with great grace and sensitivity. I imagine them simply connecting the dots: "Bald equals cancer." And maybe that's all they need: awareness that sometimes health issues alter how we expect people to look or act...and that's natural. 

For now, I could just swear my ideas are flowing more smoothly. I think it's because they aren't getting tangles up in my hair follicles. And it will grow back. Long and lush and thick and curly and brunette...OK, white...but I can live with that.

Journaling: What a Gift

Each year on this day Doug sits down and reflects on the year past. He captures his thoughts in his one journal entry of the year. Just one, today, preserved.

I've been keeping a journal since my tween years, when I knew four things about myself: I would never get married (I tried anyway); I would never have kids (I'm the best eccentric aunt); I would live in an apartment (I'm baaack!); and I would be a journalist (well, writing and teaching will have to do).

Now, my journal takes the twice monthly form of a letter to a friend. We have for many decades corresponded faithfully. What I tell him is my record of my life and reflection on it. It's all stored electronically these days (with backup) but I have a storage unit near full of boxes of hard copy journals dating back to the 60s.

I do it to confront an issue or capture an experience. Maybe for someone in the family down the road to understand us all a little bit better.

I had a coworker who wrote brief comments in his day planner about important events in his life and those of his family as a form of journaling. Another who writes notations in her cookbooks about when and why she made a recipe --- someone's birthday, a wedding, other significant turning points...

When my mother's memory started to fail, evolving eventually into dementia and Alzheimer's, she started keeping a "notebook," (she would never have called it a journal) to recall what she did each day. She'd note the date, the weather, her schedule for the day. It sat open next to her place at the kitchen table, always faithfully at her side. We kids started to leave her notes in it as well. If we stopped by and she wasn't there, we'd leave a note. Hidden somewhere in the future pages we'd write "I love you," for her to find as she turned the pages on new days.

I have all of her notebooks but I haven't read them yet. I'm curious about the thoughts that she might have included beyond her daily activities but I'm scared to perhaps witness her decline captured among those pages as well.

Mom's been lost to Alzheimer's for 12 years now and my dad died too young. There's so much about them and our family history that we'll never know because we have no one to ask.

It doesn't really matter whether you think of yourself as a journal writer or how often or faithful you are to the task. It doesn't matter why you do it --- to preserve family history, wrestle your way privately through some personal challenge, make notes to yourself for future use... There are no rules, no requirements. You're the writer, the editor, the publisher. You decide.

What matters is that someday someone will be able to touch your words. Absorb them and the stories and lessons they tell. Imagine opening up your long gone great grandmother's cookbook to find her handwritten notes. What a gift.


Share your stories in the comments section below.

"Still Foolin' 'Em" - Billy Crystal's take on turn 65

"Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys?" is the subtitle of Billy Crystal's 2013 book on turning 65.

It opens as if he's channeling me. Same questions, same thoughts, same fears, same frustrations, same aches and pains. No credit. I'd sue but I'm pretty sure it's just happening to all of us.

It's wonderful to know an artist's performing style so well that while reading his words, I hear his vocal inflections and imagine him acting it out for me --- reading it aloud to me.

It's an entertaining read and moves about as fast as Crystal does on stage. The only problem: I'm in bed with a book rather than Crystal himself...oh, that's right, he's happily married. ugh.



"Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys?," published by Henry Holt, 2013



Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Standing in the middle of the road

I’m standing in the middle of the road.

A glamorous convertible filled with 20-somethings pumping out the party music and confetti races up the hill and past me unaware, invincible, carefree.

In the other lane toddles a pristine late model Cadillac tank. Behind the wheel is a shrinking and perfectly coiffed elderly couple. Their car crests the hill and slowly begins its descent.

 And here I stand caught between and looking both ways.

I’m told I’m a baby boomer, a member of the sandwich generation, not yet a senior and no way I’m a tweener, GenX or millennial.

Sixty is the new 40, but I’m only 26. That’s such a relief!

 Well, actually I’m 26  trapped somehow in a 60-year-old’s body.

No body switching movies plots. Twenty-six was just such a productive, creative, nurturing year that I choose to stay there even though my body did not.

In recent years, the aches and pains of this body, which has not aged as gracefully as I had intended, has caught up with me. Falls with broken bones and sprains. Cancer, surgeries and chemotherapy.

I am starting to admit that I am aging.

I am no longer invincible but vulnerable.

When we moved to a home that was suppose to be further down the road to retirement, I found myself slumping under the weight of the high anxiety my fears about aging, retirement, uselessness, and surrender were causing. (Every time I use the words “high anxiety” I start humming Mel Brook’s song from the movie of the same name.)

High anxiety ... it's always the same;

High anxiety ... it's you that I blame.

It's very clear to me I've got to give in.

High anxiety: you win. ©

At the same time, we were plotting “semi-retirement.” Working less in our career fields and making more time to enjoy our summers on the lake, volunteering, and travel. Yet, semi-retirement made me wonder if I was too outdated to continue to hold my own with the youngsters in my field. Anything left in me to contribute?

All of the economic fears came crashing down around my head as well. Are our savings enough? How do we ensure we can cover all of the health issues that we are starting to confront?

And then of course, what if one of us loses the other? What are all of the overwhelming tasks and commitments that we’ll have to muddle through alone?

And there’s nothing like grandchildren to jar one’s perspective about her age and fading place in the world.

Overwhelmed with me yet?

And then someone jolted me with “You’ve got 30-40 years left.”

“Well,” I thought, “That’s my adult life so far.” Heck, that’s lots of time. (Blatant but comforting denial).

My father died at 61 and I’ve always said that was way too young. I’m not even there yet.

Plenty of time to leave the old paths behind and head out in new directions --- professionally as well personally.

Plenty of time to address the gaps or flaws in the rest of my life plan.

And waaaaaaaaaaay too much time to surrender to some stereotypical image of an old lady.

While I’ll admit that I shouldn’t be standing in the middle of the road in the first place, I think I’ll stay right here, for a while anyway, taking all the risks and waving happily to all who cruise by.

© 1977 HIGH ANXIETY Mel Brook, arranged by John Morris

I know I'm not alone. Share your stories in the comments section below.