Should a person know whether or not they have Alzheimer’s? My mother did not know, but this was at a time when senility was thought to be the common plight of aging folks. There were medications back then as well, but those medications were the treatment of mental impairments with or without the verdict of Alzheimer’s. Now that specific diagnoses means specific things, I offer this perspective of knowing about your Alzheimer’s based on how Cindy came to find out about hers.
Cindy’s noticeable mental health impairments began when she was 50, but several doctors from several different disciplines ruled out Alzheimer’s at the time because she was too young. Since we did not know the clinical diagnosis we held out hope that Cindy could get better.
When our primary care provider called us to come in last October I knew that Cindy had been diagnosed with early onset dementia by the neuropsychologist. I did not share the diagnosis with Cindy in order to keep up a pretense of hope. Thus I was not pleased when I suspected our primary care provider was going to spill the beans to both of us and eliminate that hope. I could have administered the medications, proceeded with her care, without her knowing precisely why.
As she was given the news Cindy was devastated as one might imagine. I was angry at first as I consoled my tearful wife, but then the next step was to create a bucket list of things for Cindy to do. In order to pursue that bucket list we cashed in Cindy’s retirement accounts early. What else were we saving them for at this point? Yet we neither would tap into those retirement accounts nor even create a bucket list without knowing about the diagnosis.
The good news is that bucket list creates it’s own form of hope. There always is another item on the bucket list to tackle; with that is the presumption and hope she will be well enough to pursue the next item. Given that this bucket list accommodates her passion for hiking, there is also the hope that the very pursuit of this bucket list helps her cognitive function.
On the one hand I do believe that ignorance can be bliss in regards to this disease; what happened with my mother offers some proof of that. Yet if one wants to make the most out of his/her life one needs to always know with what they are dealing.
