By Seth Boyes,
When I was a young boy — probably in second grade — my mother brought home a picture book. There were no talking animals. There were no valiant princes on noble quests. This one was meant to help me understand the reality that my grandfather — her father — had Alzheimer’s disease and that one day we would ultimately lose him to it.
And that’s just what it did about three years later.
Anyone whose family tree holds a bit of Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia will probably tell you it’s the sort of things that follows you through life, like a scar — or the very tip of a splinter you can’t quite pull from beneath your skin no matter how hard you try.
Everyday happenings, like forgetting where you put the set of keys you swear you had in your hand a minute ago, aren’t just frustrating. They’re tinged with at least a speck of worry, despite the reasonable part of you that knows it’s much too early for the disease to have taken hold in you. Maybe part of that inner tension is that youth offers us all less and less protection with each passing year, and eventually it may not be so unreasonable to think symptoms could be showing themselves.
It doesn’t take long before you find yourself drawn to certain types of scientific articles — the kind you’d normally skip over — simply because the word Alzheimer’s is in the headline. And you tell yourself it’ll help to know what the latest research says. So you learn about plaques and you learn about the blood-brain barrier and you learn about the theories as to how this disease does its diabolical work to the human brain. And you always do this with the hope that the words under today’s headline will tell you some intelligent so-and-so out there has finally been able to make sense of the mystery and developed a cure, so you can let go of your worry.
Well, times have changed since I first had to witness what Alzheimer’s can do to a person. And I was reminded of that fact while covering the local Walk to End Alzheimer’s on Saturday morning.
There was plenty of purple on display that morning — the color is meant to recognize the loss of a loved one to Alzheimer’s disease. There are other colors too — blue for people living with the disease, orange for support of the Alzheimer’s Association and it’s mission, and then yellow in support of those living with the disease.
But then there’s white.
It wasn’t in abundance at Saturday’s walk, but it’s not supposed to be — not yet anyway. I learned the white pinwheel, which one of the local walk’s committee members carried along Saturday’s route, symbolizes the hope of one day recognizing the first survivor of Alzheimer’s disease.
We aren’t there yet of course, but we’re getting closer. Organizers pointed out that the FDA recently approved a drug which may slow the progression of early Alzheimer’s symptoms, saying it’s thanks to the individual efforts of those like the 135 people who laced up their walking shoes outside Decorah City Hall on Saturday — the funds they raise help support the kind of research that brought about the newly-approved treatment.
That kind of medicine is the sort of hope my second-grade self didn’t have as I huddled close to my mother’s shoulder, caught somewhere between understanding and ignorance as we tried to hold a conversation with her father inside his memory care unit.
It feels like a long time since that day, but in the grand scheme of things, we’ve only been working at this for a few generations.
So, yes, it takes time. And many of us have lost someone already.
But that white flower is still coming. It hasn’t crossed the finish line yet, but it’s coming. And it reminds us that efforts taken up now are not in vain.
I believe we may one day develop a cure…and we may one day be able to leave the solemn picture books gathering dust on a shelf.
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