I stopped writing this blog in October 2014 because I'd discovered that I did not, in fact, have Alzheimer’s disease and because the decline in my cognitive abilities had stabilized. Several weeks ago, however, a reader emailed me to “urge [me] to do a 'follow up' post to let us all know how things are after this passage of time." It seems like a good idea.
I'm very grateful to be able to say that the gradual
loss of my cognitive status that precipitated this blog three years ago has
leveled out. Further medical tests indicated
I did not have Alzheimer's disease. Cognitively
I've been stable now for almost two years and over the past six months certain
abilities have actually improved: I'm able to concentrate a bit more, and I don't
get confused as much as I did. I still have
significant deficits in memory, in word-finding, in organizing my thoughts, in
multi-step cognitive processing, and in certain kinds of computation. Aside from my memory decline and my
difficulty word-finding, however, most people don't recognize anything wrong or
they think that it's just a result of aging.
I believe it has to be more than aging, but whether it is or not is no
longer important to me.
I'm not much embarrassed when I forget someone's name or
even that we just met last week. Most
everyone I see day-to-day knows about the loss, so I don't have to explain
much. Generally, when I meet someone
new, I'll tell them in advance that I'm terrible
with names and faces and I'll probably forget who they are the next time. Usually, I don't have to go into detail.
One aspect of the decline that does bother me is that
complicated discussions are almost impossible now. I can't remember enough to
follow the ideas. My college-professor
son-in-law, for instance, loves to get into abstract discussions about almost
anything, and I just can't keep up anymore.
We spent Christmas in Philadelphia with my daughter and her family. I'd recently read the book Capital (by Thomas Pinketty) and was
excited about it, for it helped me to understand some of the important issues
we're facing in our capitalist economic system.
My son-in-law hadn't read it, but he'd read some reviews. When I started to tell him about the book, I could
convey only my emotional excitement, not the particulars of what had excited me. As college professors are wont to do, I
suppose, he immediately critiqued the ideas in the book, and I found myself
almost helpless, frustrated, and irritated.
(I love my son-in-law and don't want anything to stand between us, so I suppose
I need to talk with him about it … or maybe he'll read this post.)
On the other hand, my intellectual functioning has
improved enough that I've dared to go back to teaching some less complicated
subjects. Because of my remaining
confusion, I've decided to require my students to bear more responsibility for
the class (making me more of a coordinator).
This is probably better teaching than my previous lecturing, anyway, so
I'm enjoying the teaching more than before.
What is much more important to me, though, is that many of
the gifts I received from my time with Alzheimer's (here
and many other posts in the blog, which you can find by entering the word
"joy" into the site's search engine) have, to some degree, remained
with me, and my life is more joyous because of it. I'm less uptight about getting things done
and am fairly (although not completely) comfortable taking on fewer
responsibilities. I'm easier to get
along with (people tell me), and I have more friends. I can rely on others, where before I would
have insisted on being more independent.
None of this is perfect, of course; there's plenty of backsliding, but I
am so much happier than before. It's a
great gift.
Perhaps the biggest difference from several years ago is
that I've been given back a future that I thought had been taken away. I had been counting on only a few years of
full intellectual life remaining. (That
was a certain kind of gift, too; I could let responsibility for long-term
projects slide without guilt.) But now my
future offers the possibility of more. I
am able to take some of those responsibilities back. Despite my history of depression and a
certain irritating realism, I have always been an optimist at heart. So I'm
eager to see how it all works out. Even
considering the broken state of our politics, even considering the state of
racism and global climate change, I still look forward to experiencing this
strange future that is coming.
So … I'm grateful.
I can't ask for more.
