So, it’s too often just a clique when we say it but what I want to talk about is what it’s like to really lose your mind. We have all kinds of aches and pains and maladies that attack our bodies and in most cases with proper medical care we can overcome them or learn to live a new normal life with them but losing your mind is a whole new thing. Now I’m not talking about an emotional problem or depression or anxiety. Goodness knows that can be bad enough. What I am talking about is dementia. No organ in the human body has the complexities and the ability to make life good or miserable like the brain. To the body it is the center of life. A body without a functioning brain, is very sad indeed.
This summer I lost a good friend to this debilitating disease. He had been diagnosed some fifteen years ago and that’s not even half the time that I knew this man. At first the changes are subtle. When you’re over sixty you don’t get too alarmed at forgetfulness. Who among us doesn’t have those senior moments? But the day comes when the frustrations set in and you began to question, “Is this happening to often? Can it be happening to me?
Most doctors’ offices have a set of questions they ask, when doing a wellness test even if you’re not there for memory issues. But when you are there because of memory issues then the protocol changes. There still is not a cure for most dementia cases so having it diagnosed only confirms your suspicions and although there are some medicines to slow the progression, it’s largely a waiting game. And it can be a long waiting game. No other disease impacts the loved ones like dementia. It’s called the ‘long goodbye’ but to often, ‘goodbye,’ comes a long time before the end. In the case of my friend I am sure he didn’t know me for many years before the disease finally took his life. His wife, who was his caregiver, tirelessly took care of him to the bitter end. Not a task many people would have been up to. In some ways she was as much of a victim as he was. I think about this man a lot. We were the same age; had the same likes and dislikes and he was family. He was my daughter-in-laws father.
Dementia is no stranger to all of us. This man wasn’t the only friend that I lost to this disease and it won’t be the last. I know of several cases right now in some of my friends and family. It’s become commonplace in society.
So why am I writing about this? Maybe it’s like this. I remember when A.I.D.S was a death sentence. I had uncles and aunts who died of diphtheria when they were kids. I had classmates who died of polio. Our friends lost their little girl to childhood leukemia when she was 11 or 12. Today most of them would have not only lived but they would have been cured. Medical science will find out how to cure dementia someday too but the question is when. There are a lot of foundations out there today and they’re all looking for financial help for research to cure a whole host of diseases. But there is only so much money to go around. Please help the foundations that support research to cure dementia.
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