By David Magallanes /Guest contributor
My morning earlier this week, like most mornings, was peaceful. I had read my newspaper and once again felt that I was aware of local, state, national and world news. I had settled into some projects I’d been working on when I received a phone call that suddenly upended my world for several scary moments.
I will tweak some of the facts, but only slightly, to protect the embarrassed.
I picked up the phone and heard the voice of a consultant that I’ve known for nearly forty years. We consider ourselves good friends. Even during business meetings, we bring each other up-to-date on our families and health. We’ve been seeing each other at least once every year — and even more often lately— to conduct official business. We had seen each other as recently as two months ago. So I was happy to hear from him, even though often the purpose of his calls is to ensure that our transactions with the government are smooth and surprise-free for me. In other words, he keeps me out of trouble — not that I would purposely get myself into it.
So when he asked me if I was still willing to donate my printer, I assumed that at some point I had told him about a spare printer I had in the garage. I didn’t at all remember telling him about it, but I must have, I figured, or else how else would he have known?
“Let me walk out to the garage, Tom, and I’ll see if I still have it.”
I was fairly sure I no longer had it, but just to make sure, I took the phone out with me to the garage as we continued talking.
“Well, Tom, it looks like I did give it away — in fact, to a recycling center.”
Tom didn’t sound too disappointed. “Oh, well, that’s OK. By the way, did you send me that form?”
“Form? What form was that?” I was surprised that I didn’t recall the form he was talking about, but it wouldn’t be the first time I needed a reminder.
“You know, that form we talked about.”
“Talked about? When did we talk about it?”
“Last time we talked! You don’t remember?”
“Umm…no, Tom, I’m trying to remember…”
“It was that form to sign you up for automatic payments.”
I thought to myself, “Automatic payments? Why would I do that?” So I said to Tom, “I’m trying to recall … having a little trouble…”
As I was hammering my memory trying to loosen those facts lodged somewhere in my mind, I started worrying about my memory. Why, why, why was I not remembering this? I was deeply mortified and angry with myself.
My mother had died six years ago of dementia. One of my sisters nursed her until her death. Before my mother’s stroke, she was forgetting things she’d told me only minutes earlier. My father, still alive, imagines “facts” that never occurred. I read about how mental health — or the lack of it — is passed from one generation to the next, sometimes skipping over generations like a stone skips as it is sent spinning over a surface of water.
Meanwhile, I was growing concerned, but I wasn’t yet in panic mode. At least, not until Tom asked me the next question as I was grappling with my recollection.
“Well, then, have you sent me that check?”
“Check?” I said to him, my voice almost trembling. As I think back now, I remember that my body was literally curling up as I stood in the garage and started wrestling with this question. I couldn’t for the life of me remember what he was talking about, and I was starting to feel either quite stupid … or very scared.
Now I was beginning to feel real panic. This was official business, and I was losing my mind — or so it seemed to me during those horrible moments. I became apologetic, like a little boy telling his dad he was sorry.
“Gee, I’m sorry, Tom, I just can’t remember anything about a check. What was it for?” I felt so embarrassed, not to mention incompetent.
Now Tom was starting to inject impatience into his tone, which really made me feel idiotic. “You know, the check that you owed me.”
“I owe you something? I thought I had paid you everything,” I said as I wracked my brain and forced my checkbook register to flash before my eyes. Nothing…zero recall. But it isn’t like me to forget to pay people.
I felt that Tom was starting to lose patience. “Well maybe you can ask Joyce.”
This would have felt comical had it not felt so tragic and frightening.
“Joyce?” I asked him, as my disconcerting fear started to give way to relief.
It had suddenly become apparent to me that maybe he thought he was talking to someone else — and not to me. Or at least, that’s what I was desperately hoping.
“Yes, Joyce, your wife,” he said, almost angrily. The impatient implication that I was losing my mind corresponded to my dawning realization that I was not.
“Tom…I’m not married!” Of that I was sure!
“Oh … I must have called the wrong person.” Now Tom was the embarrassed one. I laughed (he not so much), not because I thought this conversation was funny, but because I was so relieved to know that for now, at least, I had dodged the dementia bullet.
There was one other time in my life I swore I was losing my mind. Several years ago I had gone to a mom-and-pop coffee shop in a nearby town and had two cups of an exotic coffee that I found I had particularly liked. I knew it would rattle my nerves a bit the rest of the day, but it was one of those coffees that made it all worth it. Or so I thought.
When I got home, I was feeling a bit “strange.” I clearly remember brushing my teeth, but feeling as if I were phasing in and out of reality. For several minutes, I honestly could not tell if I was in a dream, or if this was in fact my conscious existence. I felt intensely disoriented, as if my sense of the space-time continuum had been seriously compromised. I must have felt as if…yes, as if I were high on drugs. I started to panic (does my family history bring this on when I start fearing the loss of my mind?). I reached for the phone. I was going to call my daughter and ask her to come help me. In my panic, I irrationally feared that this was something permanent. But the flashes between the dream and waking state seemed to begin to subside, so I just sat on the bed as the nightmare washed over me. And then there was peace once more in my semblance, and my world was no longer spinning out of control.
I’m sure some druggies would say, “I want some of what he drank at that coffee shop!” To this day, I wonder just what was in that coffee.
I wrote a letter to the owners explaining my experience. But I’m sure they thought I was a crazed customer looking for a way to make some money off them. I didn’t pursue it — it was a battle I chose not to pick.
Over the years, as I recall my mother’s agony and witness the tragic lives of others — some of them close — who struggle with their mental health, I’ve come to the place of wanting to get down on my knees every day and expressing gratitude that I have a degree of mental health that allows me to function without the screeching friction that so many around me seem to have in their lives. There but for the grace of God…
I’m becoming painfully aware that because of wrong thinking, stress or genes — i.e., the cards we were dealt before we even left our mothers’ wombs — our tether to mental health may well be more fragile and tenuous than we dare imagine.
Mental health is — or should be — a major concern for all of us, either regarding ourselves or our loved ones. Because when family members fall under the shadow of dementia, our lives are impacted horrendously. Then we have to grow up and make all those big, adult decisions.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association*, “Of Americans aged 65 and over, 1 in 8 has Alzheimer’s, and nearly half of people aged 85 and older have the disease,” and, equally heartbreaking,
“Today, 5.4 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s disease – 5.2 million aged 65 and over; 200,000 with younger-onset Alzheimer’s. By 2050, as many as 16 million Americans will have the disease.”
I normally like to bring optimism and sunshine to the columns I write, but the sad truth is that most of us will be touched in one way or another by the scourge of dementia.
Upon announcing to the American people his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease, former President Ronald Reagan declared, “I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead.”
Regarding Alzheimer’s research in this country, let’s hope to God he’s right.
*http://www.alz.org/documents_custom/2011_Facts_Figures_Fact_Sheet.pdf
— David Magallanes is embarking on a speaking and writing career whose purpose is to promote and facilitate the attainment of the American Dream. As an optimistic American of Mexican descent and an educator in college mathematics, he brings a unique perspective to issues of our day. He may be contacted for speaking requests or for commentary at adelantos@msn.com