Disease

Prospect Avenue

Saw Mom a couple times in recent days. She seems fearful and unhappy. She brings up Dad now and then. This week she said, "Say, Jon. I want to ask you about something. I think more often than I did that our daddy has died."

I said, he did, in Ann Arbor.

"I have no memory of that at all." She said she wanted to go to a doctor that was "really good" to fix her memory.

This was Thursday. I took her downstairs to a volunteer appreciation reception. There was a big crowd. I got her a glass of wine, and crushed up a little sweet pastry so she could eat it. Then I steered us back toward the elevator, but she said she wanted to go back to see the people. So we moseyed back through the thick of the crowd, and a dozen people greeted her, like the reception was for her. I heard one man say to a friend, "She used to be so ... " but I didn't hear the rest.

Her therapist said she'd done what she could about Mom's swallowing problem, and she was requiring that her meat dishes be pureed. I saw her pureed turkey -- a white paste that looked like baby food. The therapist said she hated to do it, because a lot of people won't eat it.

I thought: This is my fate, too.

About five years ago I was diagnosed with myotonic dystrophy -- muscular dystrophy that affects the extremities. So my ankles have weakened -- unless I'm careful, I wobble when I walk; I can't open a pop bottle with my fingers; and swallowing can be an unpleasant adventure. I've lost weight, and while I like to think it's exercise and diet, it's one of the things the doctors track.

The reception

Me and JV both