Around 9;00 p.m. after a rather busy day Mac is as usual very tired, and as he stood waiting to do whatever he has to do before bed, he looked around saw me and said.. 'well shall we," and of course i waited to hear him say go to bed, or brush our teeth...and he said DANCE!!...Well that was a surprise, and took me back to the days of when we would whirl around the house with one or the other of our many grandbabies, and that's what we would do and sing...Shall we dance, on bright cloud of music, i would just love to see him dance aournd with the baby and we'd sing and dance all over the place...so i asked him - do you remember that song, that we used to sing to the babies and dance to it...He looked a little perplexed and then said, 'well yeah, hmmmm," so I started to sing the last line.."on a clear understanding that this kind of thing may happen shall we ....and he sang out Dance, shall we Dance shall we Dance...it was so much fun to see him really get it.
Actually we've had some really up days, and of course the down moments as well, but mostly up, as he has enjoyed a couple of warmish days where we've been able to go for a fairly long walk, - walking, how important that is, i wish i had brought that up today at the Alzheimer's Cafe, where we went to hear a specialist in research of Alzheimer's , and whose name has promptly escaped my mind at the moment, it was a really good meeting - many questions and only some answers as the big A..is such that more and more people are aging and more and more people even at a young age are getting that dread disease....and when mentioning prevention, he listed Education, Activities, physical Activities, Socializing, - maybe then i should have stressed 'walking' .
In any case he said that of people who are obese, smoke, have diabetes at least 50% will get dementia...Dementia being the umberella title for Alheimer's disease (which is the leading form of dementia and accounts for 50% - 75% of all cases0 Vascular Dementia is the second most common and other dementias include Vascular Dementian lewy body Dementia Frontotemporal Dementia Creutzfeldt-jakob Disease and mixed dementia (usually Alzheimer's disease combined with Vascular Dementia)
After listening to this i'm sure everyone there was a bit worried and then to add to the worry the specialist pointed out that memory loss can even be caused by over the counter meds such as muscle relaxants, yikes i take that...plus such illnesses as sleep aneepia, or whatever...and concussions etc etc...if we weren't worried before we went there i'm sure we were a bit when we left. But it was understood that these memory losses could be prevented and even aleviated by peventative measures..even by drinking some red wind - hmmm....apparently...but he didn't give the dosage..
Anyway, after the lecture and the listening to the pianist , eating delcious fruit, cake and drinking coffee or juice, mingling with people - some of whom we now know...we met a person from the A. association who is interested in having the Alzheimer's patients and caretakers do a virtual memory box project..sounds like an intriguing idea..which we will look into later...altogether though an interesting day..Mac at these type of activities is rather leery of someone perhaps taking our coats, our wallets? hmm...as we mingle with others so he wants to make sure and sits quietly taking care of them, but somehow he does attract others and therefore even sitting there we did get to talk to others like himself or perhaps not quite as far along in the disease as he is..but almost ..and one person who is a daughter of a lady in our building...she is involved in a 'preventative research at mcgill for those who may possibly have A in their future - because of their relationship to a person with the big A..' since her mom is here, i will be able to find out more about this later.
Mac after we were home forgot all about this meeting, and as usual lives in the present...i wanted to record it all as i'm sure there will have to be a cure and it will have to come soon, so this record of someone who was so so "with it" and now is no longer on top of things...won't be able to be cured but how we live and try to keep memory or memories...i'm sure will be of interest - so 'shall we dance....?? or shall we just close our eyes and go to sleep...g'nite
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