Our bedroom lies on the second floor of our house. The kitchen and most other common rooms lie downstairs, while our third-floor attic has been converted into a den. After I have dressed Cindy in the morning I will instruct her to go downstairs, even opening the gate at the top of the stairs to make this happen (the purpose of the gate is to keep the cats and their hair on the first floor). Most mornings she will proceed through the room next to the gate to ascend the attic stairs. I call her back, hold her hand and guide her through the gate to go downstairs.
Cindy knows where the kitchen is, knows that is where she wants to go, yet her body directs her to go up rather than down. This is one of many examples revealing a mind-body disconnect, such as her tendency to put strange things in my coffee. However, most of her disconnected actions appear dyslexic in nature. She’s standing at the outer door, I ask her to come in and she goes out, instead. Her pants are halfway down; in whatever direction I instruct her to go with her pants, dressing or undressing, she does the opposite. I ask for her left foot and she gives me her right.
The first mind-body disconnect I observed with Cindy was a tendency to put her shirt on backwards. You may observe more subtle brain dysfunction symptoms before such an obvious sign, but Cindy’s “dyslexia” happened early enough to fall within what I consider now to have been her treatable phase.
I make a distinction here between Alzheimer’s being “treatable” and “curable,” which remains illusive and perhaps impossible. Still, the brain health checklist provides what is needed for such treatment while maintaining a high quality of life. In a sense it’s never too late to employ those tips.
