BS: Oldimer's Disease

Subject: Oldimer's Disease
From: GUEST,Sally
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 05:51 AM

In one thread (must have been sometime last week) there was talk of 'forgetting' Alzheimer's, Oldtimer's Disease etc and other similar terms. Wanted to go back to that thread but can't find it any more. Could anyone please help me. Thanks Sally

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: Wolfgang
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 06:03 AM

age and being exited by music perhaps?

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: The Shambles
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 07:27 AM

Also here? Educated man

But there is not much humour in the real thing, my thought are with anyone out there who has experience of this horror.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: GUEST,Neil Lowe
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 08:19 AM

A few months ago there was a humorous Thought For The Day that dealt with the general topic of forgetting, absent-mindedness, CRS(Can't Remember Squat) etc. If the link turns out to be garbage, it's http://www.mudcat.org/thread.CFM?threadID=14757 ( Thought for the day (Oct 28) which was posted on the 29th!!)

To echo Shambles' post, in the above thread there was no intention to poke fun at people who suffer from the actual disease. Alzheimer's is not funny, to be sure.

Regards, Neil

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: GUEST,Neil Lowe
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 08:22 AM

...and I got the day wrong also.....I see I'v not improved any since that thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 08:33 AM

Aren't we using these terms to help avoid becoming terrified of having the real thing? (Which has happened in our family.) I don't think anyone here has been poking fun at anyone, but rather at ourselves, and helping each other do it. If we can't have humor over bad things we aren't human anymore.

Also with the amount of thinkiong one has to do in a day, and the pressure sometimes to keep thinking, personally I enjoy it whenever I find I've been really really stupid for a moment, and survived. My kids can still crack up the whole family be reminding me of the day I drove them home from school, and they said most of the students had been dismissd to attend a funeral. I said, "A funeral, what, did somebody die?" Duh. Then there was the Korean Ice Cream stand I "found" when we moved to cheese-steak village from ethnic-food-paradise Chicago. I really thought I'd seen a Korean ice cream stand.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 08:34 AM

Aren't we using these terms to help avoid becoming terrified of having the real thing? (Which has happened in our family.) I don't think anyone here has been poking fun at anyone, but rather at ourselves, and helping each other do it. If we can't have humor over bad things we aren't human anymore.

Also with the amount of thinking one has to do in a day, and the pressure sometimes to keep thinking, personally I enjoy it whenever I find I've been really really stupid for a moment, and survived. My kids can still crack up the whole family be reminding me of the day I drove them home from school, and they said most of the students had been dismissd to attend a funeral. I said, "A funeral, what, did somebody die?" Duh. Then there was the Korean Ice Cream stand I "found" when we moved to cheese-steak village from ethnic-food-paradise Chicago. I really thought I'd seen a Korean ice cream stand.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 08:34 AM

Aren't we using these terms to help avoid becoming terrified of having the real thing? (Which has happened in our family.) I don't think anyone here has been poking fun at anyone, but rather at ourselves, and helping each other do it. If we can't have humor over bad things we aren't human anymore.

Also with the amount of thinking one has to do in a day, and the pressure sometimes to keep thinking, personally I enjoy it whenever I find I've been really really stupid for a moment, and survived. My kids can still crack up the whole family be reminding me of the day I drove them home from school, and they said most of the students had been dismissd to attend a funeral. I said, "A funeral, what, did somebody die?" Duh. Then there was the Korean Ice Cream stand I "found" when we moved to cheese-steak village from ethnic-food-paradise Chicago. I really thought I'd seen a Korean ice cream stand. Such joy, followed by such desolation of hope. And soooo dumb.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: Amos
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 08:55 AM

Haiku for Praise

Click once. Though it seems forever, It is working! See? Posted.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 09:11 AM

Nope, that's not it...

but thanks for the haiku

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: GUEST,Sally
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 02:24 PM

Thanks to The Shambles. That was exactly the thread I'd been looking for. Sally

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: Metchosin
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 02:50 PM

Something I didn't know until recently, although it may have been dicussed here before, considering the nautical minds that abound, the expression "doesn't know squat" is a nautical term. Apparently one must calculate for "squat" when navigating. Squat is the compression affect that a ship has on water and if you don't make allowances for it you are going to run her aground, even if the charts say the channel or whatever is deep enough.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: Ely
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 05:01 PM

Don't worry. I cut the legs off of a pair of pants last night to make gym shorts. My weird boyfriend proceeded to turn one of the legs into a hat. A floormate expressed interest in trying this out, so I said I'd give him the other leg. He said, "What, you have TWO?".

We all have our moments.

I didn't think anyone was poking fun, either. My grandmother is in a pretty advanced stage of Alzheimer's and we're just glad she's not having lots of physical complications and that she's well cared-for, and that the home is well-staffed so they can give patients some extra attention

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: Metchosin
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 05:42 PM

Praise, we have a standard answer for that dumb question. My Uncle asked his boss for time off to attend a funeral and was asked, "Oh, did Fred die? to which, my uncle replied "No, we just bury him once a year."

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: wysiwyg
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 07:40 PM

LOL-ing around again making my step daughter think I need to go to the thrird floor of the hospital.

You know, Ely, I appreciated both parts of your message. Here's a picture-gift to all who love people with Alz:

Imagine you are one of the players at the nursing home and a "non-player" has come along for the hell of it. You are singing, etc., and she is sitting alongside one of those tote-a-senior recliner things, in which lies the distorted and (you think) empty shell of a woman. The non-player is draped half way across her upper body, arm around her neck, other hand stroking the woman's face, gazing into eyes that seem vacant. (You feel pity, an admiration.)

They're not vacant. She is soaking all of this up, and tears are rolling past a faint smile. The non-player is so avidly and delightedly attending to this pursuit that she has no idea the rest of the people present are staring with their jaws hanging at such a pure testament to the love inside us. These two women don't know each other. One needs, and one can... and does.

May we all be loved like that, aware or not, at least for a moment in our lives.

Metchosin-- As for the multiple deaths of individuals, I actually deal with that in Red Cross! We do messaging for military and their families in emergencies, and we have to call the funeral home at whatever hour just to be SURE Aunt Bertha hasn't died for the fifth time when little rotten Johnny gets homesick! I am going to incorporate your approach into our training.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Feb 00 - 08:51 PM

They used to talk about "Second Childhood". Sounded like a good idea, something you could even look forward to.

But the pity is it isn't like that - except sometimes, and sometimes it can be.

The thing with Alzheimer's is that it isn't just fading memory, and confusion, if it's just that, can have that, and it's alright really, if a bit awkward at times - it's a process of destruction and invasion, and it's an illness that happens to some people, not a stage of life that's up ahead for all of us.

I remember, when I was at school (and I'd have been about six or seven) one day the classroom emptied, and I oput on my hat and coat and I waited and I waited to be fetched home. Then everyone came back in, and I found out they'd all gone for lunch. So the teacher handed me over tom the nuns, and they took me to lunch with the big children in the convent next door, and the big girls all made a fuss of me and I had a lovely time.

You don't have to be old to get confused.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: Ebbie
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 02:36 AM

It occurred to me once that there has to be a really heartbreaking phase of Alzheimer's, when the person is aware there is something wrong but cannot imagine why everyone she/he loved has abandoned her so I wrote this song: I remember I once had a family And I know that I was happy then For I can see their bright little faces But I don't know where- or when.

Memories lost in the mists of time I don't know much anymore The years, the days, the hours all run together Memories lost in the mists of time.

Yesterday- or was it just this morning? They gathered 'round my rocking chair I recall the scent of many candles But I knew nobody there.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: Ebbie
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 02:39 AM

Sorry- Can someone tell me how to make the lines stay in order!

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: Metchosin
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 03:13 AM

Ebbie, type br with a "<" before and a ">" at the end of each line and two "br" thingies to do a double space. Leave out the quotation marks and don't use spaces.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: Metchosin
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 03:40 AM

Great song Ebie. My brother wrote the following poem about Alzheimers and our grandfather.

Grampa Jack

I watched as you dailey unremembered things
sort of like baking a cake in reverse...
a little less of this, a little less of that
take away away one teaspoon of the past....
But suddenly fold in one lucid moment!
a sprig of oversweet lilac...
one milk cart which left you a hunchback...one donkey engine
a kerosene lantern sent in a drunken rage across the head of
your beloved mother, by your father who, you beat unconscious
and left forever...
three lost brothers, or,
were they lost family photographs....?
And then there was that time when that locomotive derailed and
you were there to pull the engineer from the wreck but the steam
had done it's damage, like your years, and when you took his arm
to pull him to safety his skin slid off his arm as smoothly
as Garbos' evening glove, only....
gone
blank
Eyes like wet, grey sand and a rattle of a voice
through lips as thin as tin....no teeth, you see...
saying "who are you"
and you crushed who you loved but no longer knew....
And I watched quiet...hurt...angry...ashamed as you slipped
behind that veil of ether to unremember me
for that last time.
Copyright©1999 R.Godfrey

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: Metchosin
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 03:48 AM

sorry Russ, its just too damn good to hide away in a drawer.

Subject: RE: BS: Oldimer's Disease
From: The Shambles
Date: 12 Feb 00 - 04:11 AM

Thank you for the songs/poems. They bring home very well the process and effect of watching a loved one , slowly become a stranger.

The BBC have just made a series Of Mervyn Peake's, Gormangast trilogy. There is a very touching scene where the 'old Earl' is playing happily with his daughter and he then asks her "Do I know you?" The effect of this statement on the daughter is very well done.