http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7525115.stm
My mind goes about as fast as a chainsaw all day.
And then it stops. Damn! Why can't I remember that name? Where are my keys? Where did I put what was just in my hand? Am I getting Alzheimer's?
My Dad's mother, "Grandma" (I had two Grandmas, differentiated by Decker and Lattanzio. I never called them Grandma Elizabeth or Grandma Judith, just Grandma.), used to live six or seven blocks away, although it seemed like a really long walk for an old lady. She rocked side to side when she walked in her black Oxfords with the Cuban heels. In her purse were always two things for me: A mint patty and a chocolate covered coconut bar that I hated. You know how coconut gets bigger in your mouth? It's bad on a little kid. Mom took those.
Anyway, Grandma, who didn't speak English would come up mostly on Friday evenings and stay for a visit. She always wore shiny gold ball earrings, her only jewelry. I wear a third piercing with a small gold ball in my right ear for her. I wish we could have talked. We did, in a manner of fashion, but I would love to have heard stories about Italy from her, and about coming to America, steerage class.
Then something happened. We'd get calls from neighbors. Grandma Lattanzio was lost. She would get confused trying to find "Luigi", my father. In those days, the neighbors were so close - friends, friends of friends, relatives and relatives of friends, that despite her confusion, she managed to get to our house. She would be delivered by a neighbor or Dad would pick her up.
I don't know what the conversations were like when she became vague. But the Alzheimer's she had seemed to get no worse after a while. She was 86 when she died, and it seems to me now that she walked up for visits until she became physically, not mentally, incapable.
A friend's husband, an attorney, is dimming. I met him in a grocery a year ago - maybe not that long, and he joked about getting lost. He was there solo. He was hanging on. His wife believes
in good nutrition and homeopathy to stave the disease off. It may be working. Who knows what chemical toxin preys on our organs, affecting our brains, or where they come from? Wholesome food and natural medicine can't hurt.
My friend Marge is going through the journey with her husband who is now in a nursing home.
Cancer ravaged my father's brain, but I know the feeling of not being recognized; of memory coming and going; lucidity in and out.
So I hope this drug and the trials will be successful.
Sometimes I think of how it would be if I contracted the disease. I guess I wouldn't know. It's for the ones who love you to suffer through it more than you. To watch day-by-day the slow fade of the essence of someone you love must be profoundly painful.
I pray you who read this never have to face it, but for more information, start here:
http://www.alz.org/index.asp
The handsome couple above are my grandparents, Paolo and Elisabeta Lattanzio, on the walk beside their home (their second) on Bodine Street, Staten Island, New York.
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