At some
time I learned to tie a necktie. I recall going to a photograph’s studio, ahead
of my senior year of high school. As my family knew, I rarely smiled on command.
And back in eighth grade, the girls who hanged out with me found me “too
serious.” By the time I was ready to enter my final year of high school, my studio
portrait showed me as a brooding eighteen-year-old. All of my life,
I have been
intense.
Why did I bring this up? Because if you have early-onset
Alzheimer’s, it’s worth doing anything to slow down the disease’s progress.
Just a few days ago, I had seemed to have lost my ability to knot my tie. In
retrospect, I probably overreacted. There were other times that it took me very
long to make the knot. But this episode is the one that spooked me. When I said
“spooked,” what I really meant, was this was the longest time I went between
not dealing with my neckties.
And, culturally, the necktie has been on the wan. Back in
1984, when I was in my first full-time reporting job, I was expected to wear a
tie even in sweltering humidity. I recall one of the local officials in the
town being surprised that my editor expected me to wear a tie in such oppressive
conditions. But the question is how often should I tie my? Every three days or
four days? That would seem reasonable. But there are other realms in my
life in which I want to maintain. Just a
couple of days ago, I was struggling to insert my lap and shoulder strap and
lock me in. This, of course, is the way that toddlers are handled by their
parents. And I need go back to the 2018 Ride to End Alzheimer’s, when I
realized that that I was struggling to pin my ID number. I had to ask my riding
partner, Matthew Abbate, to fulfill that this task. This is an example of the
failure of my small-motor skills.
And in the years ahead, I will be busy cataloging my symptoms, until the lights start being
turned out, one by one, until I approach that dark realm, my facilities steadying
waning. My projection is that I will live for many years, on account of my good
physical state. Most likely, “aphasia,” the loss of speech, or the inability to
understand speech, will be my final destination, preceding death.
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