Essay

Testing for Alzheimer’s

Not on your life!

I read about it the other day. It was a short health item tucked between the possible firing of Attorney General Barr by our outgoing President Trump and the latest COVID statistics. It probably wasn’t the main attraction for many people, but my eyes glommed onto it like a tiger focused on its prey.

There is a test now for Alzheimers. It’s not your routine one, of course. It costs quite a bit because of the DNA analysis. But it’s a reliable way to determine if you have dementia. Physicians use it as a diagnostic tool after they’ve given you some cognitive tests such as counting back from 100 by sevens.

I don’t think I’ll ever take this test because I intend to stay in denial for the duration of my life. Even if they have to take me kicking and screaming to a nursing home in my diapers, I’ll deny that I have dementia. It’s looking more and more like it’s going to be my only defense.

Here’s why. Both my parents developed dementias in their eighties, and I’ve been scared ever since that I’ll follow the same path. As the cliché-ists say, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I have the same stress intolerance and emotional makeup as my father, and he developed dementia. If you don’t already know it, the odds of men developing it are far less than women.

So the probability of waking up one day and realizing I’m one of the chosen is my constant companion. I brush my teeth thinking about it, shower thinking about it, and gulp all those psychiatric meds thinking about it. You might say I’m somewhat obsessed by it, but I’d deny it because denial is the only weapon I have to fight what may be inevitable.

There is no cure for dementia although your neurologist or gerontologist will smile and say there are drugs in the pipeline. But you know and they know that nothing will be FDA-approved in your lifetime. The pandemic has robbed you of all hope that research dollars will be funneled into something intended for the geriatric population.

And the irony is that this same geriatric population now consists of all those Baby Boomers who smoked hashish, took trips on LSD, and listened to Janis Joplin and Joe Cocker at Woodstock. Glen Campbell already sounded the bell several years ago, and now it can’t be unrung. Robin Williams was heading in that same direction, according to reports from relatives.

I didn’t do any drugs or attract the attention of millions of fans, but that won’t prevent me from getting dementia. For all I know all those people who laughed, rolled in the mud, and fucked it up at Woodstock won’t get dementia. Maybe stress relief is the antidote, and these people know how to de-stress. It’s anyone’s guess what causes dementia. No one really knows.

I wonder if Bill Gates has given any thought to it. I’m not sure because all I ever hear him talk about now is his volunteer work for vaccines for Ebola and now COVID. The same with Sean Penn. But as I said, guys have less chance so perhaps they worry less, and if they worry less, that means the decisionmakers, who are mostly men, won’t appropriate enough monies for research.

Maybe they’re getting back at us females, some kind of passive aggressive strategy. Well, it’s not going to work with me, buster. When the time is right, I’m going to mobilize with a load of like-minded women and try marching to Washington, DC. They’ll have to notice us then. Maybe I can get Kamala Harris or, better yet, Elizabeth Warren and Gloria Steinem (they’re older) to head up the grassroots group.

But nothing can get going until this pandemic ends, and we have come in last in that race. Our esteemed president has seen to that. Wasn’t it just a few months ago when he raced to Walter Reade Hospital to find out if he had dementia? Yeah, I think so. He would have denied it even if he was diagnosed.

That’s the one action of our president that I’m going to emulate. Maybe if I combine denial of dementia with a heartfelt letter to Biden (who is definitely a prime target for dementia — didn’t Reagan get it in the White House?), I can convince these old white men to blow a few billion on a surefire cure.

My sister called the other day and she’s four years older. She thinks she may have dementia, but I don’t give her much stock since she’s been a hypochondriac for years. However we have the same genetic inheritance, and if there’s any logic to this disease, she’ll get it before me.

Talk about synchrony: CNN just now posted a news alert that not paying credit balances and loans could be early signs of dementia. Really!! Fascinating tie-ins between economics and dementia must be the work of male researchers. Somehow I don’t think women would come up with this one. Women might decide that the world has heard enough about diagnostic markers for the disease, and what we need is a cure.

I’m going to call my sister and tell her about my denial plan and this CNN news peg, which , I predict, will disappear into the void within days. Maybe if we both deny the whole shebang, we can pass for normal should we actually become afflicted. Maybe if we just do what all those cancer patients do — play images in our mind of the cancer cells self-destructing — we can beat it.

Is that denial Toto? If so, let’s just click our heels and head to Kansas.