the mirror, advocate, the talk

THE MIRROR

i look in the mirror and do i see my future

my younger brother he is the mirror i look at everyday

we have the same genetic make up and are one year apart in age

he has alzheimers disease and was diagnosed officially 

5 years ago after he had helped me move my mother

who had alzhiemers disease out of her assisted living

apartment 

during the move i noticed he had problems moving the 

furniture out of the apartment and he got lost driving us 

to moms new nursing home (we had grown up in that 

small town)

afterwards i notified his wife to have him re-evaluated for 

alzheimers

he was evaluated properly and was diagnosed and was

started on aricept (donnepezil) and stopped working

he was handed samples for this two years earlier 

when he complained to a doctor about memory problems

no work up was done or follow up was done

he had side effects like all of us do who start aricept the 

first month and discontinued it 

he continued to work and his memory problems gradually 

worsened

since diagnosed in stage 3 alzheimers he has progressed now

in five years to late stage 5 alzheimers

(go to www.alz.org and look up 7 stages of alzheimers)

the reading ive done says early diagnosis and treatment is important

sometimes it can alter the angle of decline so that sometimes you 

can gain extra time of near normalcy with your family and friends

or at least where you can know who they are and appreciate them 

thats what i hope as i peer into the mirror

will the early start of aricept make a difference for me

will doing the preventative things im doing make a difference

mirror mirror on the wall.......

ADVOCATE

since my family has a strong history of alzheimers disease and 

because i have been diagnosed with early mild cognitive impairment

amnestic type that could be due to alzheimers disease i have tried to

be an advocate for alzheimers disease as much as possible and hope

to do so while i am cognitively able to do so

i have personally seen the emotional and financial devastation this 

terrible disease can do

its easy for me to be an advocate

here is a link to a recent article from an interview that was published

in the quarterly newsletter from the alzheimers research center at 

ut southwesterm medical center in dallas

go to this link to read this article see page 2 and page 4

THE TALK

next week i will be giving a talk to a large group of family doctors

about my story and what happened to me and will use it as a 

vehicle to talk about alzheimers disease

i realize how little i knew about all this when i was practicing

i hope to talk about those things i should have known 1 year ago 

that would have made me a better doctor caring for the few

alzheimers patients that i had in my practice

if i can connect with just one of those doctors next week so 

that they become better at caring for their patients then i

will have been successful

more next week

have a good weekend

the organicgreen doctor