Still thinking



Over Easter, a number of us were sitting about in a pleasant picnic area in a Victorian forest (yes, not all of the Victorian bush was burned) eating a barbecue lunch (yes, there wasn't even a total fire ban). A couple in their 90s were talking about recent developments in their lives, in particular their participation in the No Falls exercise program, when the man made a kind of throat-clearig gesture and, with a small smile, changed the subject. I wish I could give you a verbatim report on what he said next, but I'll have to settle for a reconstruction that is sure to be much less elegant than what he actually said:
I'm not asking for pity but I'd like to tell you something about my mental illness.

He doesn't have a 'mental illness' as the term is commonly understood. He does have Alzheimer's.
It's been diagnosed for six years now and I believe I had it for seven years before that. Three things happened recently that made a difference. First, my old colleagues from the university had big party to celebrate the way I had organised the department so that it was able to do proper [...] studies. Then I-- came to live with us, and he and B-- organised a number of regimes for me.

The encouragement from the department and from B-- and I-- helped me to acknowledge the Alzheimer's, and to think about it. I observed what was happening in my mind and realised that I had been suffering from three paranoias and two phobias

Did I mention that in his working life he was a professor of Psychology?
Once I'd recognised them I was able to establish regimes to overcome them. And I'll say this, that even though they are sometimes very hard on the people who live with me ...

Here his wife rolled her eyes in good-humoured long suffering.
... these regimes have made a very big difference to the quality of my life. You realise I am speaking to you from this, not just about it, but from it. As I'm describing what's happening, I have no idea what's going on. But I estimate that the changes that have been brought about by acknowledging the disease and having the support of B-- and I-- and of people from the department have reduced the level of disability by about 25 per cent.

In my memory, he spoke for much longer than that, and it was clear that part of his experience was the pleasure of rising to an intellectual challenge. I was curious and impertinent enough to ask what the paranoias were, and he talked about one of them, telling of applying a lifetime's habit of careful observation and rigorous logical processes and arriving at a recognition that what he had seen as a terrible imposition was really something that made life better for many people, himself possibly included.

This interlude among the snags and sauce reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe's Descent into the Maelstrom, Jill Bolte Taylor's description of her stroke, or the bit in the movie A Beautiful Mind where the character John Nash figures out that the little girl he sees must be a hallucination because she never gets any older -- the hallucinations didn't go away, but -- in the movie and possibly for the actual John Nash -- once he'd recognised what they were they no longer played havoc with is life. I felt that I was in the presence of genuine heroism.

Posted: Mon - April 20, 2009 at 11:43 AM           |

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