To read Teresa Inserra's four-part series on Alzheimer's, click here:
Click through to see all stories in this series related to Alzheimer's.
My 87-year-old dad comes from a generation that believes in wasting nothing, spending wisely and doing things in moderation.
My dad, Jerome, loves playing dominoes and card games like pinochle, euchre and crazy eights. He likes to read the newspaper and listen to the local news. He only likes clean or silly television shows like “Hee-Haw,” “The Lawrence Welk Show” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” He loves anything sweet. Desserts are his favorite.
Like my mom, Dorothy, he’s always been very religious and prayerful. Oh, how I was so embarrassed each time one of my childhood friends had to sit through a premeal prayer, which lasted as long as a commercial break. Mom and Dad prayed for everyone they knew and even those they didn’t directly know because those people were a part of their church’s prayer line. Only the names from the church’s prayer list were written out; the other prayer intentions were recited from Dad’s heart four times a day.
Dad has a weird sense of humor and laughs at his own jokes. If it involves passing gas, it is especially funny to him. My two older sisters, Denise and Brenda, say I get my sense of humor from him. Maybe. They aren’t entirely wrong.
The reason I’m writing this column is because of Alzheimer’s.
Our family’s first experience with dementia was in the 1980s into the mid-1990s. I don’t think Grandma, my dad’s mom, ever had an official diagnosis but it was clearly dementia. She lost her short-term memory and became unable to take care of herself.
Before being moved to a nursing home, Dad would often drive 18 miles to take her supper my mom had cooked. I don’t remember how often, but it seemed like every weeknight. Dad, his brother and two sisters had worked out a schedule where someone would be with her most of the time.
I also remember Dad visiting her at the nursing home quite often, playing dominoes with her each time. She cheated and it was always amusing.
I was 15 when she died.
Dad was the youngest in his family. In the decades following Grandma’s passing, Dad’s two sisters would be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. One died in 2010 and the other died in 2020. As if that weren’t enough, my parents lost one of their best friends to the disease in 2015. Then, one of Mom’s sisters, my Aunt Mary, and her husband, Bill, my parents’ fellow Sunday night pinochle players, were diagnosed with the disease.
After retirement, Dad often commented about his bad memory. When he was trying to remember someone’s name or something that had happened, he’d scrunch up his forehead and rub his eye. We hoped it was just him getting older. I mean, he never had a great memory. Mom remembered and still remembers everything.
We noticed when Dad became withdrawn and rude to my sisters and their children during family visits, but we thought he was just being a curmudgeon. We thought maybe he was depressed or maybe it was that his hearing was failing. His memory and thinking skills began to decline.
We hoped he would avoid an Alzheimer’s diagnosis but in 2019, the year we lost Uncle Bill to the disease, Dad was officially diagnosed and placed on a medication to slow the progression of the disease.
Dad continued driving and running errands for Mom until March 2021 when he got sick, so sick he missed Aunt Mary’s funeral and almost missed my wedding. Out of nowhere, he lost his energy, his desire to eat and his ability to walk. We thought it was a quick decline from Alzheimer’s and that we had lost him forever.
Luckily, at the ER, his doctors recognized he had temporal arteritis. It took steroids and a three-week stay in a nursing home for physical therapy for him to bounce back. He was released the day before my wedding and I will always consider that a huge blessing.
He had another setback this May when he developed pneumonia and then COVID. He got COVID while he was in the hospital and it spread to my mom, my two sisters and a niece. He wasn’t able to sleep well at the hospital and developed sundowner’s – extreme confusion and delusions. At times, he confused his wife of 59 years with his mother.
Amazingly, he bounced back with physical therapy at a nursing home. Another huge blessing.
It was during that last hospitalization I emotionally (and do I mean emotionally) decided to do stories on Alzheimer’s. It led to a four-part series, which concludes this week.
There are just so many people in our area impacted by the disease. I think it’s hard to fully understand the toll on family members until you become a caretaker. I had a peek at it during that last hospitalization and it was physically and emotionally exhausting.
I wish we were further along in finding a cure but I’m happy that research is going strong with new developments. With so many people in my family with the disease, I can’t help but worry, “Am I next? Will my sisters get it?”
Dad is in stage 4 of the disease. He still knows our names, most of the time. He seems confused about his grandchildren. He repeats the same stories several times a visit. He’s able to walk but unable to do some simple tasks without assistance. Mom has led the prayers for the last couple years.
When I visit, I’m happy with the days he feels sociable and wants to tell his stories, even if they are the same three or four stories.
I enjoy seeing Dad’s mischievous smile to let me know he’s still silly Dad. You know it’s a good day for him if he smiles big, saying “I still have my humor.”
My sisters and I will continue to feel blessed by the good days and the smiles until the next stages of Alzheimer’s set in. I pray that is a long time away but realistically … it could be months, it could be weeks, it could be days.
