Reply #14: My Grandfather suffered from Alzheimer's for several years.

[Pab Sungenis]

For the longest time, his wife covered it up as best as she could, but then she was diagnosed with brain cancer and gone five weeks later. It all fell on my mother and I.

First, we had to have a legal diagnosis to take his Power of Attorney to take care of him. I still remember when the Neurologist was doing the preliminary interview with all the topical questions. This was in 1996, right after Clinton's re-election. When the Doctor asked him who the President was, my Grandfather just uttered some obscenities. The doctor turned to ask me if that was good or bad. I said "it could go either way. He could think it's Clinton, or he could think it's Roosevelt."

After a while, I stopped being "Paulie" because he was associating my name, or "Paul Jr." with a baby. I made the circuit of male relatives of his, being confused for everyone from his brother Frank to his brother Joe, to the next door neighbor. The caregiver was impressed one time when he had a 45 minute conversation with me, calling me "Paul" each time. Then she realized that he thought that the "Paul" he was talking to was his long-dead brother in law.

The recently-installed pool in the backyard became associated with our summer house in Avalon, or occasionally with Storybookland, a local mini-theme-park owned and operated by one of his sisters. Whenever he got bored or frustrated, he'd call for my Grandmother, insisting it was time to go home, even though the house he was sitting in had been his home since 1946.

The last day he was communicative, he pulled me aside and showed me a ring he had found rooting through drawers earlier in the day. He said "I'm going to do it, Joe. Tomorrow, I'm going to ask Betty to marry me." The next day he didn't wake up. He lingered with shallow breathing most of the morning until the Priest came with communion. He woke up long enough to take the eucharist, then went back to "sleep." He died an hour later.

It's a terrifying disease, and one I hope to never have to put my family through.