© Charles D. Hayes
Instantaneous
annihilation by a massive object from space seems like a merciful death
compared to losing oneself day by day, moment by moment, in the passageways of
your own mind. Okay, it's not an asteroid, but what's coming is just as bad, if
not worse. I'm talking, of course, about Alzheimer's disease, and for more than
five million people the asteroid analogy is too late; it's already struck with
a vengeance. The result is nearly $200 billion a year in medical expense, with
more than 15 million people acting in the capacity of unpaid caregivers. If we
felt the full impact of these conditions at once, instead of gradually over
many years, the collective gasp of anguish would drown out most other concerns.
Alzheimer's
brings with it a gift of guilt that keeps on giving, because there are no
satisfactory solutions. If you take care of family members with the disease,
you feel guilty. If you find them a great place to be cared for, you feel
guilty. It's what this disease does to your family members that causes guilt to
follow your every decision because, no matter which option you choose, things
always get worse. In terms of the cost of stress, Alzheimer's is off the charts
for both victims and caregivers. Both are wounded. Caregivers live shorter
lives because of the emotional toll. My grandmother took care of my grandfather
at home, and the cost to her own health was enormous.
My
asteroid metaphor is especially appropriate because of what our demographics
tell us is to come. In 2050 our gray asteroid goes from $200 billion to an
estimated trillion dollars or greater, and the cost in individual anguish
escalates by orders of magnitude that we are barely capable of imagining. If
this disease were something for which a company could be considered liable for
causing, the punitive damages in a court settlement would likely be for an
amount too great for us to comprehend because not even our government counts
that high.
Now,
consider what steps we would be taking if we were dealing with a real asteroid
whose orbit would, at some future date, bring it in direct contact with the
earth. Our efforts, of course, would depend to a degree on its size. An object
large enough to be considered a planet killer would be viewed differently than
one that would only portend local destruction in the immediate vicinity of
where it hit.
Alzheimer's
by any measure is a seismic global event. Moreover, it's only one disease that
increasingly affects an aging population. There are many kinds of dementia that
are hard to distinguish from one another, as well as some medical treatments
that actually cause symptoms that mimic Alzheimer's. A few years after my
grandfather’s death at the age of 92, I learned that a conflict in his medications
was very likely responsible for at least some, and perhaps all, of his
dementia. And I have no reason to doubt that many aging people today who are
under the care of more than one physician are still given conflicting
medications because of the pace and economics of medical practice in America.
In
his book The World Until Yesterday: What
Can We Learn from Traditional Societies, Jared Diamond writes about
visiting a village on the Fijian island of Viti Levu. While he was there, an
islander accused him of being from a country where we throw our old people
away, referring to the fact that we often put our family members in retirement
or nursing homes. Diamond also tells us about cultures where the old are killed
or abandoned as a matter of what is considered economic necessity.
As
for Americans, he writes, "Care for the elderly goes against all those
interwoven American values of independence, individualism, self-reliance, and
privacy." I suspect that it is no small part of this ethos that adds to
our guilt, no matter what actions we take with our aging parents and relatives.
Guilt is often an overt expression of the exasperation that comes from feelings
of utter helplessness.
Long
before we experience the full effect of the gray asteroid of 2050, we need to
find a way to let individuals decide for themselves whether they want to end
their lives under medical supervision when their minds are gone and there is
absolutely no hope for recovery. I suspect if the Fiji Islanders knew more
about our society, they would declare that we often show more compassion for
our pets than our old people.
The
statistics are truly frightening. One in eight people over age 65 has
Alzheimer's, and nearly half of us who reach the age of 85 will suffer its
ravages. There are some hopeful signs in medical research for ways to fight
Alzheimer's, but nothing close to a cure or prevention as of yet, and the
asteroid gets closer every day.
The Obama administration is setting an ambitious goal for having an effective treatment for Alzheimer's disease by 2025. Their budget, unfortunately, doesn't measure up to the gravity of the challenge, but if they try to invest more money in the effort, we surely can expect more filibusters on the horizon.
In the meantime, if I get Alzheimer's, I would rather that the money required to keep my body alive go instead to looking out for young people. How about you?
My
Books and Essays on Amazon
Websites
Blog
Sites
