HBO's Alzheimer's Project, Part 1

Sort of a busman's holiday, but I took time off from prep for my father's surgery to watch "The Memory Loss Tapes" - the first of the Alzheimer's documentaries that HBO is airing this week.  Haven't had time for the others yet - they're on the DVR and I'll get to them.

Impressions of the first piece:

1) It's good.  Anything that gives the disease more visibility is OK in my book.

2) It didn't make that much of an impression.  I'm not sure it was supposed to.  Saving Private Ryan isn't for people who've actually been in combat - it's for people who haven't, and want to get some sense of what it was like.  "The Memory Tapes" is for those people, not for me.  See point 1 above.

3) Sometimes it did make that much of an impression.  When I lost it, the cats were solicitous.  Always nice to find out they had that in them.

4) My father is much worse off than all but a couple of the people they showed.  That brings me up short.  I'm aware of it intellectually but it's always hard to turn that awareness into the full experience of facts on the ground.

5) I wish people would stop talking about Alzheimer's as a memory disorder.  I've gone back and forth about that but by now I've pretty much made up my mind.  It's not about memory - it's about the total destruction of cognition.  Memory is just one aspect of it.  Memory is easy to grasp, but it's also easy to sentimentalize.  It gives the impression of someone sailing gently into fog - not someone imploding violently.  Several of the patients in the documentary clearly were imploding violently.  They need to be given their due.  The truth may be frightening but it's the truth and it needs to be told.  Credit, by the way, to Joe Potocny, one of the subjects, for doing just that.  He blogs here. 

More impressions to follow after I've seen the rest.

Comments

[Shu]

I sobbed through many of the moments of the first episode. As my daughter said, it just reinforces so many of the steps along this journey that we've naively trod. Seeing people who aren't yet where 'we' are still triggers the heartbreak of what we dealt with before and how much worse some things become.

I was especially challenged to watch "Cousin Cliff" Holman -- I was one of the MANY kids who grew up watching his afternoon children's TV show on Channel 13 out of Birmingham (and my grandparents are buried in the same cemetery he was, which was another gut kick). I LOVED that show and his merry hosting, and longed to be able to be a guest. Just seeing the old clips of 'who' he was then and then how he became, it was as hard as seeing family.

My daughter kept asking me if we should turn the show off because, through her own tears, she hated that I was so obviously overwhelmed by the feelings. I said, NO - it won't get any easier to see what this horrible disease does to people who deserve a more honorable exit.

I also think that if I had not been going through the dissolution of my mother with AD, I would not really GET the extent which the episode quietly showed reality.

Oh, the heartbreaking just HURTS.

We're thinking of your dad (and you) as he faces his surgery. I'll keep my fingers crossed that things are all right.

Red-eyedly,
Shu

[Alan G. Ampolsk]

I'm probably not doing it justice. I seem to be ping-ponging between too much emotion and too little. It's still on the DVR and I'll try to spend more time with it over the weekend - along with the rest of the pieces, which I haven't seen yet.

I was thinking about the people who must remember Cliff Holman the way he was on the air. Hard to deal with childhood memories when people age normally - unimaginably hard under these circumstances.

I find myself wondering if I'd get it if I wasn't dealing with it on the ground. Not sure. Of course, I don't know what could possibly convey the experience except for the experience.

Thanks for your thoughts re: surgery - am making arrangements. Not nearly as difficult as it was last year - it's good to have the caregiving estblishment in place. A year ago I had to invent it on the fly.

As always, hang in!