Less Famous

OK so we know a little about the famous one. ?Remember that I am hypothesizing some connection between my Alzhiemer's afflicted late mother and Alice Munro? Well mom had her things to say too ....

Think carefully


Think carefully. If you say you want white, it will show the dirt. Pick black, and it will garner too much attention. Unlikely as it seems, there really is a choice. You just have to plan to entertain all the objections before getting down to it.

You make me cold just looking at you


You make me cold just looking at you. I was so powerful in my youth. We didn’t need weather – we just needed me to dress appropriately inappropriately. I was a typical teenage in many respects – my disrespect of authority was so instinctive – so unintentional. I felt cold when waking up one morning during our end of her life hospital vigil I saw mom uncovered. How humbling that was. How respectful of mom’s “you make me feel” warmth.

They smell


They (immigrant Ottawa taxi drivers) smell. Factual. “They are rude”. A cultural judgement. “My driver’s license should never have been taken away”. Life really did take a turn then – the slope just stepened. Yes the cognition tests showed degeneration. But they were so elementary it was hard to believe that they were definitive – or had any authority.

How do they know I have Alzheimer's


With the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE – or Folsom Test) – “Although it might seem like a simple procedure, only trained clinicians -- such as physicians, nurses, and psychologists -- should give and score the MMSE.”
Orientation – time, place – each from the general to the specific
Short Term Memory (Retention) – remember the three just named objects – six tries allowed
Attention: count or spell a sequence backwards
Short Term Memory (Recall) – name those three objects again
Language – six different task with spoken or written responses

We made the map of her scores – kinda like the lines that parents draw on the wall to record their children’s changing height. We placed great value in that score – or at least its trajectory. We toasted when mom plateaued. We never really talked with mom about what it meant.

And of course we never took the MMSE test ourselves