My father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's last September. Despite all the signs, and even my father's own admissions of memory slips that hinted at dementia, none of us could really accept it until the doctor confirmed the diagnosis. Even then, the diagnosis was tough to swallow, like a shot of whiskey—sharp, burning, and unexpectedly overwhelming.
My father is known for his intellect. He had a robust career in electrical engineering, spent a month doing research at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, and holds crazy amounts of patents for inventions on memory device testers, CMOS sense amplifiers, and processors. But ask him what his greatest achievement is and he will tell you it is his children.
"Live by the sword; die by the sword," goes the old saying. For my father, his brain, the very tool that forged his path through life, has become his most challenging battlefield. It's a cruel irony. A mind once capable of such mental prowess, responsible for advancements in computer memory, now struggles with his own memory. My father, the scientist, the explorer, the inventor, now embarks on the most human of all explorations—navigating the twilight of his own cognitive universe.
Did you know Alzheimer's disease typically begins in the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for short-term memory? This explains why some individuals with Alzheimer's often struggle to remember recent events but still retain the ability to perform tasks involving muscle memory, such as playing music or dancing. Regions of the brain that are involved in music and motor processing like the cerebellum are not affected by Alzheimer’s until much later in the disease. According to the doctors, my father is currently in the middle stage of the disease.
In this stage, people with Alzheimer's often struggle with language, memory, and comprehension. They may find it difficult to follow complex discussions or recall recent events. To make our conversations more meaningful and less stressful for him, I keep my sentences short and simple, and I try to talk about familiar topics that he can relate to-funny things my kids say, what I am cooking for dinner, and of course his team, the Dallas Cowboys.