Three Times the Speed!

 

It is said that Alzheimer’s patients age three or four times faster than other people. So the average lifespan of Alzheimer’s patients is about ten years.

 Wait a minute! My mother was diagnosed eleven years ago. If she had aged three times faster, she would be one hundred and two years old today. And if she had aged four times faster, she would be one hundred and thirteen years old today. It would have been something on the level of a world record.

 My mother doesn’t have any serious illness except Alzheimer’s disease. She looks her age. She doesn’t look over one hundred years old.

 Alzheimer’s disease is a mysterious disease. People say many things about it, but some of them are not true.

Picture by FUTO

Debate

 First of all, I don’t like debate very much. Even when you beat a competitor in a debate, he or she does not change his or her mind. In my opinion, he or she simply develops hard feelings after the debate. I am convinced that no one except politicians enjoys debating.

 When I was a graduate student at university, a professor from the debate club of a famous university would allow us to debate in his class. One day, I let slip that I was paying a subscription fee to NHK.

 NHK is the Japanese public TV broadcaster and insists that, if you have a TV in Japan, you must pay the subscription fee. But it is a somewhat controversial topic. Some people argue that there is no reason to pay NHK.

 In those days, I lived by myself and was not well off. But I still paid the NHK subscription fee every month. When my professor heard this, he scolded me and gave me homework: “When the NHK collector next comes to your house, you must debate him or her. You have to turn him or her away at the door.”

I don’t know whether the professor was for or against paying the subscription fee to NHK. I suspect he just thought that I should not miss the opportunity to debate with a mature adult.

 I studied the arguments regarding paying the subscription fee to NHK. It was an interesting topic. I prepared hard for it. Then I waited for the NHK collector to show up.

 The NHK collector finally came to my house. He was a middle-aged man. I opened the door. Then I took a deep breath so that I could begin debating him. But, as I inhaled, I realized the battle was lost. He had terrible breath. Debate? No way! I gave him the money and let him go.

 I had read many books and simulated many arguments, but his bad breath blew all my preparations away: No one could debate without breathing.

 Now that I am a middle-aged man, I really should take care of my breath.

 

Picture by Lightsource

Unlucky Age

 

Yakudoshi is a traditional Japanese idea that 42-year-old men must be careful of because many bad things happen at that age. Thus, some places hold special festivals to avoid unfortunate events. It depends on the area, but most festivals are organized by people who are 42 years old.

My town also has a festival of this kind. I took part in this festival a few years ago.

In the shrine in my town, they light a bonfire every day during January. Many people in Japan come to shrines in January. In the cold winter, the bonfire gives people warmth. People can also put old talismans into the bonfire.

The bonfires need tons of firewood. And who collects the firewood? The Yakudoshi guys do!

We did it on a Sunday morning in December, when we were in Yakudoshi. In the shrine is a small forest. We walked around the forest and collected firewood. We also found fallen trees and cut the trees for firewood. One of the best ways to avoid bad luck is working for shrines or society. This is one of our activities when we are in our unlucky age.

However, some members started to show signs of fatigue on their faces about one hour after we started to work. They were the white-collar workers who got good marks in school. For blue-collar workers, who always physically worked outdoors, collecting firewood is just an easy job. But for the white-collar workers, it was hard work.

A Yakudoshi lifestyle would bring about many effects on us. This firewood-collecting activity is not just a religious event. It could be a warning from our wise ancestors:

“You assume you are smart. But you do not exercise, and you don’t have a healthy body. Now you can’t keep up with others!”

 

Picture by Gorippa

My Mother and Curry

 

A doctor said, “A good caregiver for Alzheimer’s disease must be a good actor and be a good detective.”

A “good actor” means someone who has the ability to listen to the patient’s repetitive stories with fresh reactions. Furthermore, sometimes the caregivers must lie to calm the patients down.

A “good detective,” on the other hand, is someone who can figure out the patient’s mysterious behaviors. It stands on a possible theory related to dementia symptoms and consent. On the surface, Alzheimer’s patients behave meaninglessly. But if you analyze the behaviors carefully, you will find that they have certain causes for manifesting. If you find the reasons why they do, you might find solutions.

In my mother’s case, she always bought curry roux every time she went shopping. We already have tons of curry roux in our house, but she would not stop buying it. If you are a good detective, you can tell why she kept doing this.

My mother was not only a housewife but was also self-employed when she was young. Sometimes she needed to work late, same thing with my father. Someone needed to prepare dinner for us children. In this situation, curry roux helped our family. If my mother made curry and rice, we can cook curry rice by ourselves. In those days, we didn’t have a microwave, so curry rice was a warm dinner only for the children. For my mother, curry roux was essential in keeping her job and family.

We detected the cause, but we couldn’t find the solution. All this despite explaining to her, “Your children are all adults now. They can cook any dinner by themselves.”

“There are tons of curry roux in our house.”

“First of all, you don’t have a job now.”

These didn’t make sense to my mother.

So I let her buy curry roux as much as she wanted. Then I gave the curry roux to my friends, relatives, and neighbors. Whenever I give them curry roux, some people are moved to tears. They quickly understand why an old retired female worker needed to buy curry roux.

There are many good detectives in our society.

Picture by takagix

Dieting with an Apple

My worst experience happened a few months after my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

In those days, I was on a diet. I have tried many kinds of diets, but I couldn’t find an effective one. Then I thought of an original diet method. It was inspired by my favorite Japanese TV animation, Tomorrow’s Joe, a story about boxers. In the story, a boxer needed to lose weight to fight his rival. He practiced extremely hard, but he ate only one apple a day. As a result, he beat rival but died right after the match. All Japanese boys in my generation cried our eyes out when he passed away.

I can’t do the same diet method because I don’t want to die. I modified it a little bit. I ate breakfast and lunch as usual, but my dinner was just an apple. I wanted to take a bite out of a chilled apple after taking a bath, so I put an apple in the refrigerator every day for dinner.

             But my mother ate one of my precious apples during the daytime.

             After a long day, after taking a bath, I felt extremely hungry. As I was humming the theme song of the TV show, I thought of the chilled apple waiting for me. But there was no apple!

I have lived together with my mother for over 10 years. I have experienced many irritating incidents because of her illness, but this one was the most infuriating.

I said, “Don’t eat the apple in the refrigerator!”

My mother replied, “I didn’t eat any apple!”

It was no use because she couldn’t remember. I put an apple in the refrigerator every day, but my mother ate them all. I told her, “That apple was the one that I bought. So you should not eat it!”

My mother replied, “No! The apple was the one that I bought!”

Alzheimer’s patients tend to tell blatant lies that put them in an advantageous position. The caregivers need to know that. I already knew that theory, but accepting it was difficult.

I thought of an idea: I should put two apples in the refrigerator.

But my mother ate both.

I just wanted to eat a chilled apple after taking a bath!

Finally, I found a solution. I bought a second-hand refrigerator and put it in the garage, which my mother was not interested in. I finally started my diet.

The Japanese government runs nursing care insurance, and it helps pay for some nursing care products. However, in this situation, it didn’t cover the second refrigerator.

 

Picture by Rien

TV Remote Control

 

My late father loved watching TV. He always watched news, baseball, and samurai drama. When Japanese television broadcasting had been digitalized in 2011, he didn’t like the new remote control because the buttons are too many, too small, and too complicated. If he pushed the wrong button, the TV just shut down or refused any other operation. He experienced difficulty moving his fingers because he had undergone kidney dialysis for over ten years. My father said, “They did the unnecessary.”

He started to hate digital TV itself. I looked for a new remote control online. I finally found the remote control for the elderly. It has only a few simple big buttons. He loved this.

After my father passed away, do we still need the remote control? Yes, we do. It is very easy to use. If you want to watch a satellite or cable channel, it is not useful. It can’t control any hard disk recorder. But if you want to watch terrestrial channels, it is easy. In a busy weekday morning, we want to quickly turn on the TV and change the channel. This is the best remote control ever.

Things these days have become too complex.

Taking out Trash

 

Terrible things happened in my life in 2007. My grandmother who lived with me passed away. My mother and my great-aunt were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at the same time. My great-aunt didn’t have a child. After taking care of my grandmother for so long, I needed to look after two Alzheimer’s patients.

My mother and my great-aunt have difficulty taking out trash. In Nagoya City, where we live, there are strict rules about garbage disposal. We should separate and sort garbage as burnable, nonburnable, and recyclable. Trash collection depends on the day of week. If you take out the wrong trash on the wrong day, they refuse to collect. Even I forget or mistake the day. For Alzheimer’s patients, it is almost impossible to take out trash.

My mother and I lived together, so I took out the trash. But my-great aunt lived alone. Her house was full of trash. I visited her house every week to separate and sort the trash little by little. In summer, I put the bag of garbage in the refrigerator till collection day.

It was very difficult to make her take out trash. All had to be taken out by 8:00 a.m. It took me one and a half hours to get to my great-aunt’s house. I couldn’t visit her almost every morning, so I called her every day to remind her.

But it was not easy. Even if I called her, she could forget taking out the trash after hanging up. So I used to say, “Hi, Great-Aunt, today is collection day. I will wait till you take the trash out before hanging up. Please do it now.” Usually, she forgot I was still on the phone. I had to wait a very long time. But at least she could take out the trash.

The Nagoya city government is doing this complicated garbage collection system for recycling. Our slogan is “Be kind to the earth.” But this system is not kind to Alzheimer’s patients. How can we be a society that is kind to both?

Picture by makaron