Cherry Tree, Cat, and Train

 

It took two or three years for a doctor to give my mother a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. Those were the hardest days of my life. At my mother’s place of work, her coworkers had suspected that she had a medical problem. So I took her to many hospitals. But, at that time, no doctor was able to determine what she had. In the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, identifying it is very difficult, even for doctors.

All doctors used the dementia rating scale that Dr. Hasegawa had established. It involved a doctor asking a patient some questions. Depending on the answers, the doctor would determine whether or not the patient had a disease. An example follows in the next paragraph.

The doctor said to the patient, “Please memorize these words: cherry tree, cat, and train. I will ask you to remember them later.” Then the doctor asked a few different questions. Subsequently, the doctor asked the patient, “Can you remember the three words I said?” If the patient’s condition was serious, it was difficult for him/her to respond.

My mother’s case was different. She was experiencing the earliest stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Hence, she answered perfectly. Furthermore, many doctors let her memorize the three words repeatedly. Thus, she had no difficulty remembering them.

Having anticipated this kind of case, Dr. Hasegawa created a test B, which employed the words, “apricot tree, dog, and bicycle.” However, no doctor used test B.

Dr. Hasegawa’s test words described a plant, an animal, and a vehicle. Hence, doctors could quite conceivably have used “willow tree, monkey, and car” or “baobab tree, tyrannosaurus rex, and Segway.” But none of the doctors we met had used either option.

I have no hard feelings regarding the doctors who failed to identify my mother’s disease. But I suspect that doctors are basically unimaginative people.

Picture by piangtawan