Her Mother's Champion

She arises very early each day: usually between 3:30 am. and 4:00 am. It doesn’t matter if it is a weekday, the weekend, or a major holiday.  A sense of mission, of duty, and of love and devotion motivates and fuels her engine.  

Her husband awakens later and joins her for breakfast.  Sometimes it is quiet. Sometimes there is conversation about the days planned events. Hands are held and admiring glances are exchanged. By 6:00 am. and, after a kiss goodbye, she makes her departure.  

It is a 12 mile drive to the place where she begins her “work day”. The place is called the ACC or Asian Community Center.  While originally opened primarily as a care and nursing facility for Asian Americans, the ACC now houses and welcomes all nationalities. Mother has advanced Alzheimer’s Disease and has been a resident now at the ACC for just over 3 years.

Mother will awaken this morning, like most of her mornings, to the encouraging voice and loving attention of her youngest daughter.  After warm smiles and reassuring tones, mother is gently prompted to wake up and begin her day.  A soft washcloth is applied to remove overnight evidence of Mr. Sandman and freshens up the rosy color in an 87 year old face. Next, the tousled white pillow hair is carefully brushed and coaxed into place. The better to be more presentable should company come calling unannounced.  

Incontinency announces its presence and it is time for a change.  Diaper removal, cleanup and redressing a bedridden patient demands a lot of time.  Sometimes, a new bodily function begins before a change out is completed. Back to square one.  None of it phases mother’s morning provider.

Small talk is exchanged between mother and daughter.  Daughter offers warm praise and encouraging comments. Mom struggles with her words and sentences.  Some words are clear and distinct, but most of what mom attempts to say is unintelligible.  For the daughter, the language shortcomings are no obstacle, since she has compensated in her ability to read her mother’s moods and body language.  Mom also seems to have compensated for her degraded cognitive skills by learning to read the messages her daughter’s posture, tone and face are conveying.  Thoughts and feelings are now shared without a spoken word.

The breakfast tray is delivered to the room at 7:15 am.  Though all of the items on the tray are pureed to facilitate swallowing, they all have been carefully presented and sculpted in a way so as to resemble the original item; whether it is a pancake, oatmeal, or an egg sunny side up.  Feeding mother can take some time, often running 30 to 45 minutes to consume all or most all of what she has been served.  On some occasions, mother is not in a equitable mood: resisting or only reluctantly taking in her beverage and meal.

Those who have progressive difficulty swallowing their food require extra attention and observation. Mother is one of these kinds of residents.

Sometimes, mother awakens in a crabby or fearful mood: resistant to being moved or adjusted in her bed, resistant and uncooperative when being changed due to incontinence. Whether combative or cooperative, it makes no difference. The youngest daughter remains cheerful and reassuring in coaxing her mother into gentle compliance.  With the selective use of good humor, lots of smiles, exaggerated funny faces, and lots of positive reinforcement, the daughter coaxes and invites willing cooperation where there first was none.

The youngest daughter spends 4 hours per day on average providing diligent and loving care to her late stage AD mother.  4 hours a day of this kind of work is the equivalent of 16 hours of work in any other profession.  It can leave you drained and exhausted, yet the daughter never shirks or dodges what she has chosen to take on for herself.

At the end of her shift, sometimes the daughter has an opportunity to return home for a well deserved nap.  In the door, keys and purse plopped upon the kitchen table, then drop into the recliner chair.  In moments she is out. Drained but satisfied that her morning efforts were mostly a success. At other times, the demands upon her time from her aging father also require a visit to his home for assistance, housekeeping and bill paying.  That longed for nap and maybe a rejuvinating snack must wait a little longer.

Her work with her mother and knowledge of caregiving practices, therapy and medications has earned her the respect and admiration of several professional CNA’s and nurses at the ACC facility.  Some have remarked that she should take up caregiving as a career.  Yet she has had no formal  professional training nor certification in the field.  All that she provides to her mother has come from jumping in and just doing what came to her intuitively and out of heartfelt compassion.  Providing care and comfort for her mother is enough of a caregiving career for her.

The devoted and youngest daughter you have just learned of , I am proud to say, is my wife Penny who truly is her Mother’s Champion.

Jeff Dodson

December 26th 2010

2010: Getting Serious About Alzheimer's Disease

On December 13th 2010, I wrote about the passage of the Alzheimer’s Project Act being passed by the United States Senate. It was then awaiting a passing vote by the House of Representatives. The House has now voted on and passed this landmark piece of legislation.  It has gone to the President’s desk for signature into law.

The passage of the Alzheimer’s Project Act  by our 111th Congress caps off a productive year of work in making  Alzheimer’s Disease a national priority.

It is worth reviewing the events of 2010 regarding Alzheimer’s research and the growing worldwide concern about the staggering social and financial expenses associated with the disease.

On April 30th 2010, the National Institute of Health released a Draft Statement entitled National Institutes of Health State-Of-The Science Conference Statement / NIH State-of-the-Science Conference: Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease and Cognitive Decline.  The paper reviewed all of the available evidence that can be proven or substantiated about Alzheimer’s Disease from worldwide medical research and  clinical trials.  The NIH report concluded that much of the research that has been done was short on hard evidence about AD causation, progression and risk factors.  In other words, a lot of work had been done in a variety of areas without any major payoffs. The report called for a more organized top down approach to how trials, studies and research is conducted going forward.  

In September 2010 a poll taken by USAagainstAlzheimer’s disclosed that 88% of our registered voters said it was important to make AD a priority, even with the budget deficits we currently face. The poll also revealed a surprising 77% of those Americans interviewed said that they have been touched by Alzheimer’s Disease.

On September 22nd 2010 the World Alzheimer’s Report 2010 was released.

The statistics cited in this report were alarming and scary.  While many of the industrialized nations of the world are slowly taking steps to educate themselves  and their citizens about AD and dementia,  a substantial number of developing nations still lack the funds and resources to provide meaningful assistance to their own target population of both diagnosed and undiagnosed AD citizens. Some developing nations are also hampered by negative and superstitious cultural and tribal taboos regarding AD much like how Leprosy was viewed 150 years ago. 

The report called upon world nations to make dementia a health priority and  to develop national plans for dealing with the disease.

On October 15th 2010, The Shriver Report, A Woman’s Nation Takes On Alzheimer’s was released.  Maria Shriver, an ardent and passionate journalist and advocate  of women’s issues released this report which set off a nationwide dialogue about Alzheimer’s Disease. The nationwide discussion continues while the call for more AD and dementia education and research investment also grows.

The National Alzheimer’s Project Act or  NAPA was finally moved from languishing in a congressional committee to passage by both the Senate and the House of Representatives by mid December 2010.  

The following elements are provided for in this legislation.

A position within the Health and Human Services Administration to  oversee and drive a national AD program. It also provides for the acceleration of treatments to eventually prevent, halt and reverse AD. The act provides for an integrated national plan to overcome AD and coordinate the healthcare and treatment for our citizens with AD. Coordination with the United Nations and other international AD organizations is also included.

We are now beginning to make up for the more than 5 decades of time that followed Dr. Alzheimer’s discovery and naming of the disease in which nothing was done to further our understanding of how AD works or why people succumb to it. We have begun to move past ignorance and disinterest and on to a sense of urgency and national purpose about AD.

There are more than 150 gifted and talented doctors and cutting-edge researchers that contend that  AD can be stopped by the year 2020 given that we act in a forceful way now and with adequate research funding.

We have much work to do in order to make this dream a reality.

Jeff Dodson

December 19th 2010

Why Didn't I See It Before?

Spend any time at all on the internet and you will eventually see one of those visual puzzle or multiple image advertisements inviting you to count up the number of different images or faces that you see within a given picture.  Another variation of this often in the back pages of a magazine such as People, is two images of the same scene presented.  The details within the second image are close to but not an exact match of the first image. Some details have been added; some have been removed or relocated. In each case, your goal is to count up the total number of faces, or altered details you spot that will equal the number of actual faces or changes listed in the answer key.

These kinds of visual puzzles can be fun and entertaining.  There is also a more serious side to the process of what your mind is seeing.

For one thing, people tend to see and hear only what they already expect to see. In other words, they already have a preconceived notion of what ought to be visible or audible to them. Whatever you are locking in on (expecting to see or hear), also means that you are also locking out and dismissing a lot of data, sounds or words that don’t match with what you want to experience.

We wind up seeing what we want to see; and hearing what we want to hear.

This perception process has a lot to do with what is known as your RAS, or Reticular Activating System.  Your RAS is an area of the brain stem that is primarily responsible for arousal, alertness, and sleep-to-wakefulness transitions.  The RAS acts as a kind of filtering system between your conscious and subconscious.  Your RAS takes instructions from your conscious mind and then passed them on to your subconscious mind.

Make an adjustment to your RAS filter and you suddenly begin to see or hear things you had not noticed before.  Kind of like changing the channel on your HDTV.  A different station, different program and a different point of view.

Respected author, speaker and noted sage Dr. Wayne Dyer is well known for his quote, “When you change the way you look at things what you look at changes.”  Dr. Dyer’s quote is right on point with respect to the topic at hand. When operating, your RAS locks onto something you are highly interested in or motivated by.  At the same time it is also locking out a lot of other things you have deemed as irrelevant or not important. Thus you will see some things, but lock out, ignore or overlook others.

Paco Underhill, in his retail sales research book entitled, Why We Buy, summed it up very well when he addressed the issue of how customers of a business can act in a way that is a complete  surprise to the merchant owner.  Mr. Underhill simply surmised, “the obvious isn’t always apparent.”  The issue in the book concerned merchants being caught off guard by a customer behavior because the merchant was only looking at things from a sellers point of view instead of a buyers. Step into the shoes of a buyer and now the merchant sees things he completely missed before.

So what happens when you decide to tone down or shut off your RAS filter?  What might you begin to see or experience that is different from what you did not see or experience the first time you viewed an image, met someone new, or conversed with a relative?

Start to look at things differently and what you notice will be different from what you saw before.  Open your mind up to new possibilities, and what you experience will now be seen or felt in a new light.

As a caregiver who has been working with Alzheimer’s and dementia stricken parents over the past 6 years, I have made substantial efforts at trying to see things from the point of view of the parent with the failing cognition.  Entering Alzheimer’s World requires patience, adaptability and the desire to change the way you view what is happening with that person.

You CAN see as though you are seeing things through the eyes of another.  You just have to adjust your on-board mindware a little.

The choice is yours.


Jeff Dodson
December 19th 2010

A Promising New Alzheimer's Disease Finding

On December 10th 2010 the online medical information web site Medical News Today,  featured a report  concerning the work being done at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis.  The article, entitled, Poor Brain Protein Elimination Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease Development,  disclosed that beta-amyloid, which is a hallmark of AD as it begins to build up into clumps and tangles, is normally purged and disposed out of healthy neuron cells.

The key point of what they focused upon in this study is this:
Beta-amyloid is one of many cellular waste products that is produced by the neuron cells that, in a healthy brain, is normally disposed of and flushed out of the brain through the spinal fluid.

In other words, the cells in our brain are naturally equipped with a mechanism for clearing out the sticky protein junk that leads to AD.

The breakdown of this cellular “trash removal process” is what leads to the toxic buildup of beta-amyloid protein followed by progressive brain cell die-off.  In other words a proverbial “garbage handlers strike” within the brain cell community arises.

The clearance of Beta-amyloid out of the cells, not its accumulation is the heart of the AD problem.

Now besides refining medications already on the market which are aimed at reducing the buildup of beta-amyloid protein, medical science can now begin to focus on developing medications that will prevent the cells from shutting down their waste processing function in the first place.

As I have written about before, we may be closer to blending two or more medications into a kind of cocktail for AD that has proved to be the successful technique at bringing AIDs under control throughout the world.

The preferred future “Alzheimer’s Cocktail” might very well be composed as follows:

First, a medication that will reawaken or enhance the cellular waste disposal function.

A second medication that goes to work at “protein plaque and tangle busting”.

Finally, a third medication or therapy component that stimulates the production of brand new neuron cells (neurogenesis) through stem cell intervention.

This is promising and exciting medical research.  We applaud those who are researching  AD origin and causation from the angle of sustaining the process of healthy cells purging out unwanted proteins and cellular waste.  This could be the key in shutting down the Alzheimer’s process before it even has a chance to begin.

Kind of like preventing the beavers from even showing up at all to build their pesky dams and block up healthy stream flows.


Jeff Dodson
December 13th 2010

Congress Takes On Alzheimer's

On October 20th 2010 I posted an article on my blog entitled, “Ramping Up
Investment In Alzheimer’s Research”. In this article I mentioned the National Alzheimer’s Project Act and how it had been languishing in a committee in our 111th Congress without being brought to a vote.

I am pleased to see that the United States Senate voted to pass the National
Alzheimer’s Project Act (S. 3036) on December 8th 2010.

The bill now goes to the House of Representatives (HR 4689) for a vote. Time is running out and we need everyone to call, write to, or e-mail their House representatives, urging them to vote affirmatively for the bill. Once done, it then moves to the desk of President Obama for approval and signing.

The key elements of NAPA, previously presented in my October 20th blog are again listed here.

National Alzheimer’s Project Act, or NAPA. (S.3036 and HR4689). This bill was sponsored by Senators Evan Bayh (Dem -IN), and Susan Collins (R - ME)on February 24th 2010. This piece of legislation includes the following action items.

1. Establish an Office position for AD within the Health and Human Services administration.
2. Accelerate treatments to prevent, halt, and reverse Alzheimer’s Disease.
3. Responsible for the creation and maintenance of an integrated national plan to overcome AD.
4. Coordinate the healthcare and treatment of citizens with AD.
5. Ensure the inclusion of higher risk ethnic and racial populations in the
receipt of care,research and the participation in clinical trials.
6. International coordination.
7. Provide information and coordination of AD research and services across
all Federal agencies.

According to sponsoring Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) the bill “will create the first-ever national level plan to combat Alzheimer’s.”

Enacting NAPA, is a major signal that our government is finally taking seriously the approaching “Alzheimer’s Hurricane” threat to our aging Baby Boomer population and their parents.


Jeff Dodson
December 13th 2010