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"Life
From the Inside Out: Living With Alzheimer's Disease" -- Speeches
from the 11th annual Lyons Lecture, 23rd National Alzheimer
Society Conference, Halifax, NS, April 5-7, 2001
Speech
by Marilyn Truscott (page 1)
Good
morning, ladies and gentlemen.
The
Alzheimer Society of Canada has chosen this year to focus
attention on people in the early stages of the disease.
This is a reflection of our changing times, as medical
advances have made earlier diagnosis more possible and,
as a result, patients like us are coming into the Alzheimer
Society offices for help, information and support. As
part of this group, we feel very honoured and privileged
to speak to you today about our personal experiences
and insights into the early stages of these diseases.
Our
talks today will give you a window into these illnesses.
Keep in mind that I am able to talk to you today through
the support of modern Alzheimer medication and treatment,
and I will describe that later.
Unlike Cynthia and Norma,
I have no apparent family history of Alzheimer's disease.
But actually, that is the case for most people who are
diagnosed. It seems to come out of nowhere with no preparation,
no prior experience to draw upon. For all of us, dementia
seems to strike with the randomness of being selected
to win a lottery. But unfortunately, we don't win a $10
million prize. Quite the contrary.
About
five years ago, I noticed that my thinking was becoming
rather flawed. It was as if my head was full of cotton
wool and I'd have disconnected fragments of thoughts
in my head. My thoughts were jumbled; I just couldn't
seem to link ideas. The cotton wool got replaced by thick
molasses. My thoughts became slower and more laboured.
My thoughts just seemed to be short-circuiting.
At
home I was living in a world of perpetual charades, having
other people fill in the blanks in my speech. For example,
I might ask the family, "Do you know where the… the,
you know, the thing that you put in the… that thing" --
everything was a thing -- "that you turn to go out
there, you know -- that thing -- so you could go out
to drive?" And they'd say, "Oh, Mom's lost
the keys to the car again."
Well,
that was all right for me at home, but not so good at
work. I was working as the remediation manager in an
environmental consulting company at the time and I started
to play "fill-in-the-blank" games with my colleagues
and I hoped nobody was noticing. One day I was planning
a soil clean-up with one of my colleagues, and I said, "O.K.,
Dan, what we'll do is we'll dig up the uh…" and
he said, "contaminated soil." I said, "Right,
we'll dig up the contaminated soil. We'll use a…" and
he said, "backhoe." I said, "Right, we'll
use a backhoe and we'll put it on a…" He said, "truck." I
said, "Right, we'll put it on a truck" -- these
are easy words -- "and we'll take it to the…" And
he said, "landfill." "Right, we'll take
it to the landfill."
Speech continued...
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