Posted 424 (to the fancy, this is called 4/24/20)
Welcome to Friday! Or as we used to think of it, the weekend! Woot!!! Get out your shoehorns with me…we are going to plow through some number references in our little number series and lard them up into some thoughts about dementia again today. 🙂 Off we go!
Top 10 Ways the Number 424 Relates to Dementia
(Screeching sound!!) Wait! Come on, blog boy, that number surely won’t generate 10 things!!!???!!!
You wait and see!
- Mixing Food. Need a good mixer for your upcoming movie project? I am sure 424Post does nice work…and other stuff. Their cover tab’s montage was quite cute! Speaking of mixing (see what I did there???), mom, and several of the Sweet 17 had taste issues. Some would eat their food, others would only eat ice cream (go figure…). Weight gain and loss are both very big problems in their world. Mom would mix her food into a compost before eating it. Here are three links that discuss such: Link Link Link . Here is an excellent article from the Alzheimer’s Association about eating issues. This is an interesting topic. The Alz article gives good tips on choosing foods and plating them…but it doesn’t account for the odd taste preferences that develop. Neither does this good piece. Sure they love sweets, but several of them had trouble remembering what they liked, understood the use of spices, and could/would keep from experimenting with food mixing. The disease, as it spreads through the brain, does bad things to taste.
- Clamps. The MODEL: 424 STEEL COMPACT, SQUEEZE ACTION PLIER CLAMPS FOR WELDING & ASSEMBLY looks like a beaut! I tried arc welding in shop in high school. I didn’t watch the teacher explain it and didn’t realize you kind of “strike” the rod like a match to get started. Instead, I stuck my rod about 10 times on the leg of my angle iron legs to my chess table and left pock marks all over it. In dementia, clamps remind me of having a vise squeezing your head via headaches. These debilitating headaches can come before, during, or after the onset of dementia. Vascular dementia sufferers are especially vulnerable to headaches. Headaches may also be a precursor of the disease ( or others…Stroke for one) and should be treated seriously.
- Pill 424. Thank you big pharma for help with my piece. Pill 424, according to Drugs.com, is Amlodipine Besylate and Atorvastatin Calcium 2.5 mg / 10 mg. It is used to treat…wait for it…high blood pressure; angina; coronary artery disease; prevention of cardiovascular disease; high cholesterol. I have said it before (even yesterday) and I will say it again…what is good for the heart is good for the brain…and likewise!!! The things this pill treats need to be treated and mitigated through medicine, diet, and exercise if you want to fight off dementia. Please take them seriously.
- A 424 Credit Score. Is that bad? Yes. Yes, it is bad. Why do I bring this up regarding dementia? Scammers target people with early stage dementia. Even without this reality, early stage dementia patients often make mistakes with their money…big ones. Sometimes they are classical mistakes (not figuring the checkbook) and sometimes it is more lapses in judgement. Wanting to give away money is very common. I am not talking about wanting to buy the kids lunch. I am talking about wanting to give someone that delivered their pizza their car as a tip. It sounds silly…but it is very common.
- Error 424. Microsoft’s Event Viewer logs every hangup, most glitches, and the majority of things that tick you off about your computer. Event 424, as Microsoft creatively calls it, is triggered when you have a problem with something that “require(s) an explicit object qualifier”. These tend to be database problems…but I won’t bore you here. In an odd way, think of this error this way: Pretend memories have little object names and numbers that identify it in your
databrainbase. You have a need for that memory, but that memory depends on another memory to understand it or its name is wrong or something else glitches in the transaction. The other memory perhaps gets moved without the dependent memory knowing it is gone. I can remember former St. Louis Cardinal Bo Hart, but only because I remember the Cardinal’s team (and years in the early 2000s) he played for. Take out those year’s teams from my memory and/or rename it Chicago Cubs (gagging sound) and Bo Hart goes away too. Such is the problem with dementia. Memories are interlocked. I remember song A because event B happened at the same time and brought me joy/tears. This times a trillion trillion, at supersonic speed. The brain is awesome and challenging, and losing parts of one memory hurts others too. Error 424…and others…indeed. 🙁
- 424 Salt. Who knew there were soooo many salts!?!?! Anyway…over a dozen years ago, my mom (and my dad and others) contributed to our business, which eventually became named known as North American Computer Labs (dba Cyberstreet). Part of why we named it such was the name’s acrostic was NaCl, which, to a chemist or first year chemistry student, represents salt. We chose that because of this Verse. This relates to dementia for a couple reasons: Pre-Symptomatic Mom and my stepdad loaned us money to expand our business. Had that been a few years after, given the amount of time it took the disease to become more symptomatic, we might have had a whole host of problems. Recalling #7…remember that there may be situations that a loved one with dementia could make poor financial decisions. To avoid problems, work with your loved one and a lawyer who specializes in elder law to draft a good plan to handle money matters earlier in life so that later in life things are easily understood. We dodged a bullet by about 7 years that could have caused all sorts of angst.
- Kentucky Revised Statutes Chapter 424. I doubt even Digital Cornbread Table sitters from Kentucky have never even read this section of your law. I have, so you don’t have to. 😉 I mean…not all of it. You think I am crazy? Separate topic, I know…but I digress. This little page-turner from Kentucky state law relates to advertising and publishing information. It involves things that should be published (and a few that shouldn’t) and the penalties if you do the wrong thing. In dementia, advertisements and publishing remind me of the early stages. Mom, and most others, hide the extent of their illness from others. To someone in this sad situation, isolation becomes a safer lifestyle than taking a chance on going out and making a mistake that would advertise to the world that they have a problem with their memory. Sadly…very sadly, many seniors are NOT as gracious of their peers with dementia as they should be. It may be a generational thing, but I have seen and heard of many, many seniors with dementia being mistreated and mocked by other seniors. I wrote this little piece addressing this frustrating reality. Be kind to those with dementia, even if they are not. If you are a caretaker, when you take them into public, have some cards like this to strategically and privately hand out to at least try to help others understand.
- 424 Wine and Spirits. OK…give me a break. This is a hard top ten list, so I Googled this one too. This seems like a nice place to find something with which to imbibe…but that isn’t my point here. Know this: Drinking red wine (specifically the Resveratrol on the grape’s skin) may, may, may have some health benefits for fighting dementia. I mean, Wine Spectator says so, so it must be true, right?!? OK…well, some others imply there may be some benefits too. Link Link Link . However, before you go into a red wine binge please realize that over-drinking is bad for your brain, your liver, and the rest of you. Also realize that there is a whole class of alcohol-related dementias including one called Korsakoff Syndrome. Keep the vino drinking in light amounts, if you choose to drink.
- 424 in texting. OK…disclaimer here. 424 in texting used to mean (in the 90s, when texting began to be a thing) “Call me back”. Today, in an oversexed culture, it is a text requesting a “booty call” (i.e. an Illicit sexual encounter). What a world we live in! 🙁 I will leave out the link from which I found this info, but it is widespread knowledge apparently. Sue me. 😉 In dementia, something I have rarely discussed, but must be, is hypersexuality and/or sexual inappropriate activity as symptoms of dementia. I will leave alone the discussion of marital sex in early dementia, although much is written. However, acting out sexually seems to happen often. Depending on where you read the information, up to 25% of patients exhibit this kind of behavior. There are treatments to discourage this kind of problem as well. I bring this up to warn you that it can and often does happen. The range of expression is wide and sad and common in both genders. Be aware and talk to your doctor if you experience this issue for help in dealing with it. Another similar/general note: Swearing and other vices also are common even when the loved one had never been known for such. Former pastors turn to drunken sailors when the wrong part of the brain gets hit. Please, please, please remember…it is the stinkin’ disease causing all of this mess to happen, not a deficiency in your loved one. BUT, it is hard to deal with it and being prepared is a good thing.
- Matthew 4:24. “News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them.” I need some Bible after stumbling on reason 2 & 3 above there… Please know this: I love you the same, believer or unbeliever. Jesus, my Savior and Lord, healed countless people while He lived on this Earth in the first century, and still does. However, He didn’t heal everyone. Some die(d). He has a plan and He is working this and everything else out according to counsel of His will. However, He did promise to believers that there is no illness, or even tears in heaven. Could He wipe out dementia in 2020? In a word. He could inspire a cure today… He had that ability then and He does now. However, instead, He asks for (and supplies) Faith. Heaven awaits…and it will be much better than this mess anyway! Lean in on Him today… #EndALZ
Update: I had a nice, but short, Facetime with mom and my brother and sister-in-law, Steve & Connie, today. Mom seemed about the same. Kind of sleepy. She has had hand tremors off and on again, and showed them again today. I am hoping this virus mess is done soon so I can give the trooper a hug in person!