ABOUT UB

The Bear

I shed a few tears today. I had to say good but to my buddy. I met him in the cornfields of Indiana and the last thing I was thinking 14 years ago is that I would get attached to the little guy the way I did. TheLovelySoozie was asking me if we could get a cat. My response was that animals should stay outside and I wasn’t about to be cleaning cat hair the rest of my life.

All that changed when I ran into him in a small town in Indiana. He was being a nuacence to the little old lady. Hanging by her front door, begging to be fed and taken in. She asked the people I was with to take him away and that’s what we did. While in the car I asked them what were they planning to do with him. Their response was, to take him out in the country and let him go. The next thing I know they stopped at Taco Bell and got him a burrito and milk. While he was scarfing dow his food I petted him and realized he was all bones.

Our next stop was a farm house were they would be playing music and I would be tending the fire. I opened the door and let him out, thinking this would be the place that he can spend his life. While tending the fire and having a cold one, I made the decision that when we left if he came back in the truck I would bring him home to TheLovelySoozie. If it was you and someone offered you fast food, wouldn’t you jump back in the truck? Of course you would.

You will read about what happened next in my book. I will now skip forward 14 years and recount the last week of his life. We left for an overnight stay and when we returned he was lethargic and he hadn’t touched his food. We took him to the vet where they rehydrated him and gave him antibiotics. He was fine for a couple of days and then he went back to sleeping all day. My wife insisted that we don’t let him go out. My response was that he ran the neighborhood all his life and it would be a crime to deprive him of that. I followed him out, watched as he did his business and carried him back in. I figured I would give him his favorite food and I opened up a can of tuna. Every time he heard the can opener he came running. He drank the tuna water and went back under the bed. Later he had another and proceeded to jump on the dryer and go out his cat door. I started calling him Lazarus and I was sure he would bounce back. After a few days of hearing him coming and going he went out and we didn’t see him for over a day.

For the first time in three years I overslept and decided to call in to work. While on our walk we heard him under my neighbors porch and spent an hour coaxing him out. When he finally came out he was so weak that he fell over. Our neighbor suggested that we take him in and put him down and my initial reaction was that my wife would never go for that, but I was wrong. An hour later he ended up in his final resting place.

So long Bear, I will miss you!

#ENDALZ

My mom was’t crazy. She had Alzheimer’s.

“I will never get my licence”, I forget”… 

 

It was spring, 1992. I didn’t realize it at the time, but those eight words would dictate the direction my life for the next 25 years and beyond. At the time, my father was in the hospital  recovering from heart surgery. His prognosis was bleak; we were told he only had a few years to live. My mom on the other hand was as healthy as women half her age, so I figured she should learn to drive so she could maintain her independence.  Where was her first driving lesson?  At the cemetery where many of my relatives are buried, of course!  

 

Like me, my mom was born in the mountains of Greece. When she was a little girl the Nazis burned down her village. She shared a pair of shoes with her three sisters, and married a shepherd.  Caring for her young family without running water or electricity was a hard life.  At 40 years old, she came to the United States without a word of English or any money. From the nuns in the mountains of Greece, to the girl scout girls that came to her door, she loved everyone and would help in anyway that she could.  In her tiny kitchen she would feed an army of relatives and friends on New years Day every year. At seventy five she was up two stories high cleaning out the gutters with my dad leaning on his cane “holding” the ladder for her. She was minutes away from passing away in 2001 from the West Nile Virus. As the doctor was ushering me out of the ICU I asked him if I should call the family. He nodded yes. Over eight hundred people were diagnosed with the virus in Illinois that year and 67 died, many in our neighborhood. Two hours later she was arm wrestling the doctor.

 

In 1999 we took my mom to Rush Memory Clinic in Chicago, where she was examined by a doctor who put her through a quick test. “Dimitra, I want you to listen to the following three words. In a few minutes I will ask you to repeat them.”  I still remember them vividly, “table, apple, penny.”  The doctor proceeded to ask what was the season and the year.  Not only did my mom not know the season, or year, she had also forgotten the three words originally mentioned by the doctor. His diagnosis was quick and decisive; she had Alzheimer’s and would probably only live a few more years. Another grave prediction that didn’t come true since she live 14 years with Alzheimer’s. 

 

Like my mom, my dad was a tough guy. Running around mountains most of your life will do that. Instead of the couple years that the doctors were giving him, he lived eighteen. He drove until the end, so ultimately there was no reason for my mom to learn to drive. In her sixties she began showing signs of forgetfulness and many other odd behaviors. Among her odd symptoms, she became fond of alcohol, yes she started drinking, and asking my father for money. Her temper grew and she even threatened my dad a few times, something we took lightly as their relationship was always playful. She would say, “I worked, I have my pension, I want my money!”  

 

On one particular afternoon, the lovely Soozie and I were driving in Chicago when I received a call from my dad. He was distraught and couldn’t take it anymore; my mom was demanding more money. My response was for him to just give it to her. My dad said he gave her money daily, but didn’t know what she did with it. After the conversation had ended, my wife knew something was wrong even though she didn’t understand Greek. I was hesitant to discuss the situation, simply stating it was my dad complaining that my mom was driving him up a wall.  Eventually I filled my wife in, at which time she chuckled and told me she knew where the money was. It turns out my mom needed her own money to feel comfortable, and had stashed a secret pile of money under the carpet in her closet. She had let the lovely Soozie in on her secret and her theories on women’s independence a while back. Apparently my mom had been told long ago by her mom that a woman needed to have a private source of money that her husband didn’t necessarily need to know about just for emergencies.  These are the daily challenges facing those who care for Alzheimer’s patients. 

 

My dad  loved his wife. They were best friends and spent every minute together. During their courtship, while he was in the army, he would send love letters to her addressed to his cousin’s  taylor shop with an X signed on the bottom. Their most serious “arguments” had to do with where to put the chicken in the fridge, or when to harvest the tomatoes. After her diagnosis no one cared for her as well as he did, even though he was battling his own various illnesses and was constantly spending short stints in the hospital. He always had her multitude of pills in order and would pass on her pill boxes to us when he went into the hospital.  

 

So what is Alzheimer’s? In laymen’s terms I would define it as a disease that attacks the brain. It is the most common form of dementia. Dementia is another word for a decline in mental ability severe enough to interfere with daily life. There is no cure for Alzheimer’s as of this writing, although neuroscience research is moving at a rapid pace to develop more effective treatments.  This clinical definition was something not easy for my family to comprehend; in fact, we struggled many years with the meaning and consequences. My parents continued living their lives, including travelling to Greece for four or five months out of the year. Eventually my father’s medical conditions caught up with him and he passed away – and that’s when we encountered the full frontal assault — of Alzheimer’s. 

 

Dealing with my mom without my dad is a whole other story – one you’ll read about in the next article.

 

On June 21, 2014 I participated in The Longest Day.  I covered 60 miles on my bicycle from 5am to midnight, stopping along the way and visiting with people that have dealt with ALZ. The money I raised goes to the Alzheimer’s Association. This is a disease that is near and dear to my heart and diagnoses of new cases increases every year, so please consider donating a few dollars to this worthy cause.

 

See you on the bike path,

Unkle Bill




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