Alzheimers in the family

No. Reading and writing are so severely "overlearned" that they are usually among the last skills to be affected. In fact, Alzheimer's researchers are recommending that people communicate with their affected elders in writing.

The anecdotal evidence from people who have tried it is joyful to the point of tears. On their weekly car trip to the doctor, a woman's father asked, "Where are we going?" literally every five minutes. Next time she handed him a note saying, "We're on our way to Dr. Joe Smith's office on Fifth street, just like we do every week." He relaxed, started enjoying the scenery, and never asked again. One lady kept asking her daughter, "Who are you?" She gave her two photos, one captioned, "This is my daughter Susan at age 6," and "This is my daughter Susan today at age 58." She looked at the photos, looked at the daughter, smiled, and said, "You're just as beautiful as you were then."

People who have had strokes and can't talk can still write. I suspect that the younger generation, who have been texting since they were seven years old, will be able to type e-mails from their hospice room. Perhaps me too, since my mother made me learn to type when I was 14 and I can barely write by hand any more.

I haven't seen "bad spelling" on any list of Alzheimer's symptoms. Remember, it works backwards: you lose the most recent stuff first, not memories and skills from your distant past.

This means that you'll forget where you left your coffee cup five minutes ago, not the address of the place you lived in 1980. You won't remember the name of the person you just met at a party, but you'll know the name of your best friend in high school. You won't know why you're standing in front of a lawyer's office in downtown Fresno, but you'll remember why you broke up with Betty Sue in your second year at Ohio State.

It's only after the disease has progressed significantly, that you start forgetting the names of your family members and things like that. And you will STILL remember how to read and write!

There was a local news story a few weeks ago that had us all really talking about this uncomfortable topic. A lady had watched the onset of Alzheimer's in both of her parents. They started forgetting little things. But they had lived in the same house (in Maryland) for 40 years, and so had the daughter (in Pennsylvania--I may have these little details wrong because I didn't save the article, not because I have Alzheimer's). They could still drive safely and competently, and they would often make the two-hour drive across the state line to visit. Once in a while they'd stop in a cafe, and when they came out even though they knew they were on their way to their daughter's house they couldn't remember where they were right now so they didn't know which way to start driving. They'd just call the daughter (a phone number they'd memorized 40 years ago) on a pay phone (we old folks will never be comfortable with these stupid little "cell phones") and she'd point them in the right direction.

Well one Saturday they were three hours late so the daughter knew they hadn't just lost track of time in a coffee shop. The whole family and the local sheriff's deputies went out looking for them. It was snowing so it was a tough job and they couldn't make much progress after sundown.

They eventually found them. In the confusion of the snowy roads they had taken a wrong turn down a cowpath onto a farm, and got the car stuck in the snow. So they just got out and started walking. Their frozen bodies were about a quarter mile from the car.

As we all discussed this, we were rather awkwardly avoiding eye contact, thinking of our own future. It's estimated that fully half of people who live to be 75 will eventually have Alzheimer's, and it will bankrupt half of the adult children who will be paying for our care. Finally I broke the ice and said, "Ya know, I'd much rather go the way those two people went, enjoying their lives and then dying in just a few hours... than to have it take ten or fifteen years, while I lose my dignity and my wife becomes destitute after paying for it all." The rest of the people exhaled, started looking each other in the eye, and they all said, "Yeah, me too!"

Well geeze, there's your problem! You're allowing yourself to fall into bad habits. Don't do that!

I write and edit for a living, and everything I write, no matter how casual--quick e-mails to my wife, reminders to myself, even my grocery list or the tag on a Christmas present for my dog--is written in 100% correct English.

There is such a thing as muscle memory. A surprisingly large portion of what we remember is not stored in the brain. As a musician, I know that my hands remember the tiny details of how to play the bass lines to my band's songs: which finger to use on that string, whether to hold it or damp it, etc.; I couldn't possibly think of all that consciously, in real time. The same is true of sports, and the same is true of typing--as opposed to handwriting, which is much slower and perhaps can be done with more (but not complete) conscious control.

If you get in the habit of typing words wrong, your muscles will remember that. So just don't do it! This is why people find texpeak creeping into their reports and memos at work. They get so used to spelling "why" as "Y" that they write it that way in a PowerPoint presentation for the company president.

So stop being lazy! Write correctly for the sake of your muscle memory, and for the sake of your brain. It is possible to delay the onset of Alzheimer's by exercising your brain cells. And you'll make us all happy if we don't have to stumble over your typos.

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Here's an article in Parade magazine that I've sent to several people. Two wrote back within fifteen minutes and said they'd just printed it out and taped it on the door of a kitchen cabinet, so they could use the technique on their own mothers.

Talk about low-tech sometimes being the answer!

 

I'm the same way. I have always had a very poor short-term memory. I have lists up on all my walls, what to remember to take with me when I leave for work, band rehearsal, or a night out; what to remember to include in the dog feeding routine (medications, supplements, two different routines for two different dogs, etc.)

While there are cases of early-onset Alzheimer's, it's so rare that NIH would probably want you to move to Bethesda where they could study you and give you free lifelong care. To get it before the early 60's... well it's almost as likely that some practical joker in your family is playing tricks on you.

In my case I decided that the diagnosis was not nearly as important as the cure. I have timers all over the house and whenever I initiate an event which I have a history of forgetting, I set the timer. Four minutes to brew the tea, etc. When it goes off I have to walk into the room where it's located in order to shut it off (get one that beeps for at least 30 seconds so you can't just ignore it) and once I'm there I can see what it was that I forgot. The forgetfulness (most of the time) didn't go beyond little things like that so I...got used to it.

Geeze, I think almost everybody does that to a greater or lesser extent. We just don't go around telling our friends about it.

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Some of us really do have an inconvenient balance of short-term vs. long-term memory skills. It takes me forever to memorize computer passwords (ask me how I feel about these motherfucking corporate security systems that require changing it every 90 days!), but I can still remember my family's four-digit phone number from the Chicago suburb we moved out of in 1952.

AFAIK there are no licensed physicians on SciForums so none of us is qualified to tell you that you're not the one in ten million (disclaimer: I made that number up) that has Alzheimer's at 34. (Or whatever. See, I already forgot your age!) If you're really concerned, ask your doctor about it. Even if you have it it's obviously not so advanced that he would be legally required to lock you up! There's no risk and his diagnosis would go a lot further toward easing your mind than any advice you're going to get on an internet board.

Aha, so you're a creative, talented person, eh? Just the kind whose brain is organized with a much different priority set than the general population!

I'm a musician--although not a full-time career musician due to some unfortunate decisions during my childhood over which I had no control--so I cut myself a lot of slack on the theory that my brain is simply too overwhelmed with creative concepts to remember that I was supposed to buy a new six-month supply of butter when I went to Costco yesterday. Seriously, artistic "types" are famous for being absent-minded. Anyone who commandeers his brain for work that's atypical for our species falls in that category. There's a reason for the stereotype of the "absent-minded professor": It's real!

There ya go.

As I noted, you're aggravating the spelling problem by allowing yourself to fall into bad habits. If you have a skill, the last thing you want to do is let it slip away!

I'm 67 and I'm noticeably more forgetful than I was at 57, 47 or 37. But it is not at a point that it interferes with my job or any other facet of my life, nor does it make me a risk to myself or others. Especially since I started taping lists to the walls, which I should have done forty or fifty years ago! Hey--the fact that I suddenly realized that is a good way to cope with this problem must mean that I'm getting SMARTER, right?

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You betcha. Just like most strange lumps are not cancerous and most ticks you find on your dog don't carry Lyme disease.

Actually I don't really know if that will help you. It will just make life easier for the rest of us!

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Note to everyone: This only goes one way. It gets worse. You can cope and cope and accommodate and accommodate, until one day you realize that your loved one is seriously impairing the quality of your life, while you are not making any improvement in the quality of their life.

Alzheimer's is well-known these days. It's not difficult to get the authorities to give you whatever assistance you need in moving a patient into a safer location over their own objections.

Please don't wait until they cause some real damage or injury!