Denial and Alzheimer’s

In regards to Cindy’s Alzheimer’s I’ve gone through something like the five stages of grief theorized by Kubler-Moss.  This model allegedly applies only to those not handling tragedy well, the well-adjusted presumably turns lemons into lemonade.  Though there is a sequence to the stages they can overlap and occur in different orders.  For an entertaining recap of the five stages of grief see the movie “All that Jazz.”   In regards to my changing emotions over the past few years I will go with the traditional order.  Hopefully this provides some insight for others.

I forever denied Mom having Alzheimer’s, but that was a little different.  Less was known of the disease back in the eighties.  Because she always recognized who we were I chose to think what she always had was what people were calling “senility dementia” instead.  Yet even so my experience with Mom was a big factor in my initial reactions to Cindy.  I certainly knew something was wrong; that accounts for the five doctors and seven tests experienced early on.

Everyone was saying the same thing:  “She’s too young to have Alzheimer’s.”  A neurologist said that based on the MRI her brain probably was more healthy than mine.  I remember being shocked at Cindy failing the “three word” test right from the start, yet because she got almost all the other answers correct the geriatrician thought a score of 27 out of 30 (I forget which other questions Cindy got wrong) did not reveal Alzheimer’s, once again because of the age involved.

Now being more informed on the subject I know failure of the “three word” test alone is cause enough to suspect Alzheimer’s, even for people in their forties.  At the time who was I to question the doctors?  Besides, I wanted those five doctors to be right.  Because of taking care of Mom for five out of our first six years of marriage I knew what lay ahead.

At first there was little consequence from my refusal to believe Cindy had Alzheimer’s.  Indeed, I did the best thing for her: we went for a 5,000 mile walk across the country.  At the time I thought it was the best thing because she had some kind of anxiety disorder from some stress she experienced.  Alleviating the stress may have been a factor for her getting better during the hike, but I now know that the physical exercise in the sun may have been more pertinent.

However, once we returned home her improvement halted.  I tried other things to see if they would make a difference in Cindy’s mental health.  Some of them backfired and likely made things worse; I would not have attempted them in the first place had I not been in denial of what her true affliction was.

That was not the only form of denial going on.  When the neuropsychologist finally informed me that Cindy had early onset Alzheimer’s I first tried to hide that from Cindy.  Hope is one of the most important things in the world.  How could anyone have hope with Alzheimer’s?  I resolved to just absorb the “hit” myself.

Our primary care physician thwarted this denial by calling us in and informing the both of us together.  I was angry with her for about the first five minutes of that office visit, then I moved on to what I should have been doing all along, accepting what was and turning lemons into lemonade.  On the drive back home was when Cindy and I started forming her bucket list.  Hope always abounds when there is another item on a bucket list to be fulfilled, but no bucket list would exist if denial prevented the cause for forming one.

Here are some ways you can provide Hope for Alzheimer’s yourself.