Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Alzheimer's: The stilling of a mind - Philadelphia Inquirer
Robert B. Moore of Wilmington was a robust Presbyterian minister, fascinated by life's big questions and devoted to his family. This is a story of his rich life and relentless decline. It is also a story about his brain autopsy and what it revealed about this mystifying disease.
...
What exactly, they wonder, turned this gentle man into an unruly stranger who shouted obscenities and hit his wife? Why did the disease strike him a decade earlier than the average? Could the car accident that gave him amnesia briefly in 1950 have triggered this calamity years later?
...
In a 1996 letter to their children, Joanna Moore, a retired teacher who thought it important to record their family history, described the disease's progress. Her husband could still drive well, with her help as navigator, but could not do simple arithmetic. He still enjoyed reading and going to movies. He had trouble with time and was unable to follow through on plans. In conversation, he failed at finding even ordinary words. He could no longer compare two thoughts or visualize something.
...
By 2000, an exhausted Joanna Moore was keeping a journal. ...She had to watch him now so he wouldn't step in front of cars. He was a dangerous passenger who grabbed the steering wheel or tried to open his door while the car was moving. He shouted swear words and walked constantly, sweeping belongings off tables as he strode. He had hit his oldest son, Andy, a Wilmington architect, and he had hit Joanna.
"Yesterday was the day I reached my own personal limit," she wrote that November, "fighting him to get clothes off, keep him in the shower while I washed him, getting him dressed. I think we've gone back to another good day/bad day cycle, but the good days (today) aren't very good, and the bad days are horrible."
The next month, she decided she could no longer handle him. Rejected as too violent by nursing homes, Moore was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. To Joanna's horror, he rode there in handcuffs. ...
Robert B. Moore of Wilmington was a robust Presbyterian minister, fascinated by life's big questions and devoted to his family. This is a story of his rich life and relentless decline. It is also a story about his brain autopsy and what it revealed about this mystifying disease.
...
What exactly, they wonder, turned this gentle man into an unruly stranger who shouted obscenities and hit his wife? Why did the disease strike him a decade earlier than the average? Could the car accident that gave him amnesia briefly in 1950 have triggered this calamity years later?
...
In a 1996 letter to their children, Joanna Moore, a retired teacher who thought it important to record their family history, described the disease's progress. Her husband could still drive well, with her help as navigator, but could not do simple arithmetic. He still enjoyed reading and going to movies. He had trouble with time and was unable to follow through on plans. In conversation, he failed at finding even ordinary words. He could no longer compare two thoughts or visualize something.
...
By 2000, an exhausted Joanna Moore was keeping a journal. ...She had to watch him now so he wouldn't step in front of cars. He was a dangerous passenger who grabbed the steering wheel or tried to open his door while the car was moving. He shouted swear words and walked constantly, sweeping belongings off tables as he strode. He had hit his oldest son, Andy, a Wilmington architect, and he had hit Joanna.
"Yesterday was the day I reached my own personal limit," she wrote that November, "fighting him to get clothes off, keep him in the shower while I washed him, getting him dressed. I think we've gone back to another good day/bad day cycle, but the good days (today) aren't very good, and the bad days are horrible."
The next month, she decided she could no longer handle him. Rejected as too violent by nursing homes, Moore was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. To Joanna's horror, he rode there in handcuffs. ...
Labels: sickness
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