When Bill invited me to join Straight Dope and join issue with Straight Dope generally and specifically on issues important to me about Alzheimer’s disease I was delighted. I am afflicted with AD, diagnosed nearly three years ago. I was found to be in the Early Stage of AD, plenty of cognitive acuity remaining on board.
Thirty four years ago I faced the fact of Alcoholism, the only relief from it was found in joining the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) program. I found a program there that was both practical and spiritual. Above all it was effective. I could not quit using alcohol and prescription drugs abusively. Desperate, having no place to go, choosing not to die of my disease, I resorted to the club of all the Alky’s, the Last Man’s Club as they called it.
They told me turn my life and my will over to the care of my higher power. They told me a lot of other things, but, the primary message was as appears above. If I did that they said my higher power, what ever that might be, could and would remove the obsession of alcohol and drugs from me. I did! It did! It was truly an epiphany, a watershed. Everything in my life leading up to AA was purposeful in preparation for it. Everything in my life that followed was because of it.
Following recover I experience success, growth happiness, freedom from obsession. That life that followed was also fraught with pain, tempered by losses, visited by reverses, the occurrence of each of which was painful.
Each time a negative event occurred I applied what I had learned in AA. I would turn it over. I would leave it to my higher power. The end result of each and every one of these painful interludes in my life transformed into something that was to my benefit, something that I found to be good and worth the pain I endured in acquiring it.
This has become a way of life that has sustained me and through which I have found more peace and serenity than I ever believed possible. I found this in my dotage, at the end of my trail, at that time of life that we quit looking for more and start adding things up. It is this exercise I thoroughly enjoy doing because I find so much that makes sense that did not make sense as it happened. This has been the subject of much of the writing that I have done. It has consisted of reviewing, analyzing and putting order to the cacophony that has been my life.
In the course of doing it I recognized I was not finished. That tally sheet that had to do with the good I did for my fellow man seemed to be more deficient than I thought it should be. In the course of analysis I did come to that point of trusting the path my life had followed. I looked at that deficiency and trusted. The manner in which all else had been cared for by this plan my life seemed to be following, I perceived this too would be attended to before things were over, before it was curtains, before I croaked!
It happened, June 30, 2006. The Doc hit me between the eyes. “You got Alzheimer’s Mister!” I had no idea. My wonderful wife guided me to its discovery without telling me beforehand. This was one of the worst things that could have happened to me, three of which I had named as the worst possible: Crippling Stroke, Loss of Eyesight or Alzheimer’s. Lightning struck, I now have one of the three and do truly hope that is enough!
Overcoming from the shock of it I found having it to be a lot easier that worrying about getting it. I could handle it and decided I would make the best of it. I put my old AA formula to work and applied it to AD. I turned it over recognizing I now had the challenge to fill out my bill and use this to remove the deficiency in doing for others I could help.
It became my goal to make having AD worth it by doing some good with it. I have done many things in that arena and each one I find to be more edifying than the last one.
The value I see in joining issue at Straight Dope is to expand my platform of advocacy for the needs of AD and for the needs of all of us faced with the impending epidemic of it. I will say more about this in later posts. This is something beneficial I can do for those afflicted with AD, for everyone else who and of course secondarily for me!
What I will say on the subject now is this:
Currently the primary effort in all groups in support of AD are raising funds to find a cure. This will be wonderful if it is successful. To date it has not been successful. Although there is much promise that something will be found, all that has occurred to date is the discovery of more promise.
I worry about what happens if a cure is not found. The care of AD patients as they go beyond early stage and become in need of in home care, assisted living care and nursing home care is super expensive. It is twice that of any other major disease we are dealing with at this time as noted in recent reports. The incidence of risk of folks contracting this disease increases with age. Some predictions talk of people at age 85 facing a massive likelihood of occurrence. As the baby boomer generations pass age 65, which is occurring now, their numbers alone will increase the incidence of AD exponentially.
Currently there are no programs of assistance for folks afflicted needing outside care unless they are without funds to pay it themselves. The super rich can afford it as long as they can withstand the high cost of care. Those of us in the middle are screwed. We are required to spend down most of what we have before we can qualify for assistance. Most of what we have includes most of what both spouses have together and separately, the one with AD and the other not suffering AD. Once spent down the one that is AD afflicted is OK. That one can go on the County. The other spouse however is out in the street. Little left for the spouse, no other resource exists unless of course the spouse can qualify for aid to dependent children.
When this hits, barring finding a cure, those afflicted suffer, the entire community suffers because the cost will drain the economy worse than the current economic crisis is done.
Currently the cost of care is prohibitive. There is no reason for this. The government can’t respond because it has the cost of recent wars, the need to replenish revenue lost to tax cuts and the cost of re-stimulating the economy to attend to.
We have to find a way to do it ourselves. I have lots of ideas and I hope other folks do too. This has been the subject matter of my postings at Alz.Org. As Bill directed look at http://alzheimers.infopop.cc/eve/for...10737#61110737 You will find the postings there as well as in a variety of the forums at Message Boards Forum Index and its subsection I Have Alzheimer’s
Mike Donohue
(And I see you found the “large font” option - eeek! 
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