Posted June 6th
On June 6th, 1944 Allied troops launched the biggest amphibious (land, air, sea) invasion in the world’s history when they sent over 160,000 brave soldiers onto the beach at Normandy, France to fight back the Nazis. (Note: the town of Springfield, Missouri, in which I work, had just over 160,000 residents at the last census.) Operation Overlord, commanded by General and future President Dwight D. Eisenhower, utilized some 13,000 aircraft and 5,000 ships in this improbable and incredible bloody assault on five beaches, code-named Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. An estimated nearly 10,000 Allied troops were killed or wounded, but it gave the Allies a jumping off point to begin a wider assault on Hitler. This amazing event was a true turning point and one of the reasons why Europe is free today. Please, if you know any WWII vets (or any vets), take some time to thank them for their service. These brave men and women were often very young, but fought like the freedom of the world depended on it….because it did.
June 6th is also a D-Day of sorts for me and my bride. Back in the late 1980’s, my bride and I had our “first Date” on this day, playing Putt Putt golf at the local chain mini-golf location. That 54-hole putting paradise has since been paved over and is now a car lot, but we have celebrated this date with a round of mini-golf somewhere nearly every June 6th since then. We love Fun Acre, the oldest mini-golf in the Ozarks and may, weather-permitting, try to head there tonight for a quick round. I typically hold no real chance of winning against my wife, Susan “Tigress” Applegate, but I will try.
The last D that comes to mind, given that this IS a blog dedicated to the subject, is Dementia. I was fortunate to get to accompany a couple of experts to be interviewed on the local public radio channel KSMU this morning on the topic of Brain Heath Awareness Month and, more specifically, having the hard conversations about the disease. Despite me, it went very well and I will soon post a recording of the edited broadcast. (It should air in the next handful of days.) Before I go further, I also want to mention how genuinely nice and extremely smart and thoughtful the staff are at the station. It was an absolute pleasure to hang out with them and with my Alz friends. 🙂
Before, during and after the interview we discussed the need to treat cognitive issues seriously at all ages, but especially as we age. The Alzheimer’s Association has a popular brochure and corresponding website that identifies 10 “Early Signs and Symptoms of Alzheimer’s” and I wanted to leave you with this list:
- Memory loss that disrupts daily life
- Challenges in planning or solving problems
- Difficulty completing familiar tasks at home, at work or at leisure
- Confusion with time or place
- Trouble understanding visual images and spatial relationships
- New problems with words in speaking or writing
- Misplacing things and losing the ability to retrace steps
- Decreased or poor judgment
- Withdrawal from work or social activities
- Changes in mood and personality
Volumes can be written to help you parse out how each of these can be observed, but I will keep my thoughts on this list short. (lol…sorry…I said short, then I snickered)
- Memory loss that disrupts daily life: It is what it says. We all have memory loss from time-to-time. Whether it is your parking spot or a lyric from your favorite song of your youth, we all forget things. I forget where I am going with thoughts at the Cornbread table all the time. Where this becomes an issue is its disruption. Forgetting where your car is parked is one thing…forgetting what store you are in is another. I really didn’t notice the disruption in mom’s life because I wasn’t there all the time. My step-dad did the driving and much of the cooking, so the opportunities to see big disruptions, even for him, were less than they could have been.
- Challenges in planning or solving problems. This manifested itself in mom a year or two ago in her getting “stuck”. She would forget a step or a task, then forget what she was doing to begin with….and move on.
- Difficulty completing familiar tasks at home, at work or at leisure: Familiar is perhaps a key here. Having trouble balancing a checkbook is a complex task, but one that mom had completed for decades until she couldn’t even start to understand it. Not so much math errors, but process errors. Cooking steps were jumbled until she stopped cooking altogether. Interestingly, music and art were much slower forgotten…but the rest of what was familiar became foreign.
- Confusion with time or place: This is a tough one for retirees like mom. Minus a structured life of regular, scheduled service and civic obligations or the like, it is easy to get the days and weeks jumbled up. I do that now myself sometimes. However, not remembering the year or the seasons even with weather cues is a bad sign. I never really discussed such with mom. The only time-related tell I should have caught is she always asked for specifics and would always write them down. That should have been a sign to me, given the rest, that she may have been struggling.
- Trouble understanding visual images and spatial relationships: This is a biggie for many people in driving. Age and eye issues like cataracts can all cause challenges in driving and even, to a point, in understanding visual images. Mom didn’t drive at the time she started getting worse, so this was somewhat overlooked. In later stages we found that she had been labeling pictures of relatives with the wrong names. She “couldn’t put a name with a face”.
- New problems with words in speaking or writing: I didn’t notice this with mom until much later, although I could have missed it. That is a good reminder that this is NOT a checklist that, unless you bomb it you are OK. Some parts of the brain are harmed differently for some than others. There are probably hundreds…perhaps even 5,280… variables in the progression of symptoms and how they become obvious. If you see that you or your loved one fails several of these, start a conversation with your health care provider. It doesn’t hurt to talk about it but it CAN hurt to ignore it.
- Misplacing things and losing the ability to retrace steps: Oh boy…a big one. Mom lost stuff early and often. However, where we should have connected the dots is her rudimentary hoarding. Like I have said in the past, not the unsanitary type of hoarding with the cats and the poop like you see on TV. Think more of a gathering of stuff and hiding it where she could find it type of hoarding. As it got worse and after her more formal Alzheimer’s diagnosis we could see this much more clearly.
- Decreased or poor judgment: One example of several: Mom went from being very conservative with money to throwing it at everything and everyone. We had to hide her checkbook and ration her money early in the process because everyone was a candidate to give large sums of money to. I am NOT talking about normal generosity. Unfortunately the scumbags are everywhere willing to relieve such a person of their money. 🙁 (Note: If you are a victim of a scammer, give SeniorAge or your local senior center a call for direction or call your state attorney general’s office.)
- Withdrawal from work or social activities: Mom was struggling to remember and to function so much that social situations became very bad for her and she preferred to stay home. Loneliness is bad for a healthy senior, but for her it was particularly sad. She was such a social, service-minded person before. However, even her peers would tease her for repeating herself or making a mistake, so the fear and sadness that resulted became too much. Seniors, of all people, should know better and they should support someone in her circumstances. In many cases they did, but in some they were terrible and made things much worse.
- Changes in mood and personality: Mom was fairly stable and not angry, but that is NOT the experience for everyone…or even many. Confusion can breed frustration which can breed anger in a early stage dementia patient. The word change is key too. Have they change dramatically? Talk to your doc.
Last thought…I promise…is a repeat. When in doubt, talk to your doctor. Get a cognitive battery of tests. Talk to a neurologist. There are lots and lots of things that mimic these 10 things. Simple thyroid illness or blood sugar can cause a few. Maybe it is something completely treatable? Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Early diagnosis in Alzheimer’s may not fix the outcome, but it certainly can make the ride much smoother for you and your loved ones.
Thank you all for enduring this long post. It is a critical subject and one that I will be back to again and again. 🙂
#EndALZ
Fun visit with mom yesterday with my sister. 🙂 We also met her hospice nurse again, a wonderful and bright lady named Ginger. What a blessing to add the hospice folks to our Team Mom care team. 🙂
Thanks for this list. It’s very helpful.
Regards, Carol
Thank you. It is a very important concept. Sorry I rambled on for 100,000 words. 🙂