122 | March• 2018
WAITING FOR ALZHEIMER’S
It was as if they were all high. High
on Alzheimer’s.
COPING STRATEGIES
Geri became watchful when she was
walking. Her gait had changed. She
felt as if she was weaving, one wrong
step away from whirling onto the floor.
It was worst when she talked while
walking. Once she fell while convers-
ing with friends. Her new rule: talk
only if necessary while walking.
One day she was driving and she
bumped into another car. There was
no serious damage, but it was totally
her fault. Not long after, she was driv-
ing with Jim when she came on some
roadworks. A flagman motioned her to
stop. Instead, she continued onward,
feeling an irresistible urge to speak
to the flagman. Finally, Jim got her
to stop. She couldn’t explain her odd
behaviour.
That night, Jim suggested that she
ought to stop driving, that she was us-
ing poor judgement. She lashed out at
him, told him he used poor judgement
all the time. Drove too fast. Tailgated.
But the next day, once the weight of
inevitability settled in, she agreed to
cut back, drive only when absolutely
necessary.
A friend showed her the ‘Find My
Friends’ app on her iPhone. “I hope
this doesn’t offend you,” the friend
said.
“I’ve already got it,” Geri replied.
She had set it up with Jim, allowing
him to track where she was through
their phones, in case she got lost and
had to be rescued.She was a different person with
Alzheimer’s, tugged back and forth
across the borders of the disease. One
day things were one way and then
they were another. Feeling normal.
Trapped in a diffuse cloud. Bursting
with energy. Worn out. The disease
wasn’t a straight line.
The fluctuations would lead her to
question herself. “It’s the fraud com-
plex that Alzheimer’s people have,”
she said. “You have good days and bad
days. And when you’re having a good
stretch you think,Am I a fraud?”
But then the disease would clear its
throat and remind her. Some nights,
she would sleepwalk. One morning,
she woke up and found herself stock-
still in the living room, peering out theSHE WAS A DIFFERENT PERSON WITH
ALZHEIMER’S, TUGGED BACK AND FORTH
ACROSS THE BORDERS OF THE DISEASE