Dr. Steve Hume, Alzheimer's patient

The difference between Alzheimer's and cancer

When I knew he had Alzheimer's, I wanted to fill his days with memory-makers, just as I would if he had been diagnosed with some type of incurable cancer. The problem is, no matter how unforgettable a day or an hour might be, he's going to forget it. It's the nature of the beast eating his brain. So I slog on, knowing these good days and hours are disappearing behind him, and I'm left to remember alone.

We have a new motto at our house: Just start now...

Never had much of a heart for service.  Self-sacrifice was never my strong suit, especially when it came to men.But the mighty oak bends under a mightier wind. Solid ground gives way to rushing waters and begins anew downstream. At last I loved someone enough to try to adapt to him. Good thing. He couldn't change if he wanted to. Can't reason with him, his reasoner is broken, to quote an expert on the Alzheimer's message board, www.alz.org, my lifeline to sanity and instruction.

Bob DeMarco, author of the Alzheimer's Reading Room www.alzheimersreadingroom.com, and caregiver to his mom, says an alternative universe moves into your house. He calls it Alzheimer’s World. It has a language of its own. The other day he wrote about how when the craziness starts, you just take one step to the left, and you are out of your reality into theirs, where things make sense to both of you, where, if you can remember in time, you say the most comforting thing, which probably has very little resemblance to anything other people would recognize as truth. There is only one truth in Alzheimer's World. Theirs.

However, occasionally their truths become life lessons, such as when he walked into my office and announced he had come up with a new motto. 

I started to take one step to the left.

 "Well, you know how I have a lot of regrets...well, what if I just start now just being the best I could have always been."

Sometimes his reasoner works just fine.