Free On Pluto by Greg O'Brien Page A

with delusions of what could lie ahead. The office was filled with decent individuals, mostly in their 80s, all with cognitive impairments picking their way through the perplexities of age and a maze of cruel games the mind can play. At 61, I was the only “young” man in the room (yikes!), and saw myself outside the box of dementia, yet felt trapped within it. I glanced at my wife. Like most couples, we’ve had our ups and down in marriage, more ups, hopefully, than downs. I felt badly for her. Today was a trip down.
    I was told earlier that Dr. Marks, an expert in the study of the mind, gets right to the point. “He’s precisely what you need; a skilled neurologist who will speak directly, no bullshit,” Dr. Conant had advised me earlier, sounding a bit like my dad, who delighted in telling others that he customarily had to drill a piece of granite between my ears just to get my attention.
    Dr. Marks lived up to the billing. Knowledgeable, cerebral, and caring in a clinical way, he put me through the paces of more clinical tests: word recall, various supplementary checks on short-term and long-term memory, category naming, visuospatial skills, and other evaluations. I flunked them all. Bottom line: the clinical tests reinforced Elovitz’s forthright assessments, and the SPECT scan identified a brain in progressive decline. His formal diagnosis: “EOAD,” as he wrote in his report. I glanced at it quickly, inverting the first letter, dealing with some related dyslexia, and thought for a moment that he had written, “TOAD.”
    â€œNo,” he said, “Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease.”
    The words cut into me like a drill press.
    â€œI can deal with this,” I said defensively. “This is not a surprise. I can fight it.”
    My reporter instincts kicked in. I showed little emotion, just digested the diagnosis on a self-imposed deadline. Facts, get the facts straight. I first thought about my mom, about my grandfather; I knew the deal. I wanted more facts. This was no time for emotion. The vital questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how flashed through my head, which felt little sensation at the moment. I was afraid now to look at my wife, so I stared at Dr. Marks, trying to remain in a state of control that I had just realized was beyond me. After all, I’m a Baby Boomer and we’re all in control. At least, we suppose.
    Finally, I gave into the emotion.
    I felt Mary Catherine staring at me. I think she must have known all along.
    â€œWhat do we tell the kids?” I asked her. My voice splintered.
    When you’re married to someone for close to four decades—when you’ve been through all the “for better and for worse” throes of marriage, when you have a partner who knows you almost as well as you know yourself, when you’ve been in love, fallen out of love, fallen back into love, and drifted, then at a time like this, little needs to be said. We both knew what the future held. No one had to sky write. We were all about the kids.
    Mary Catherine grabbed my hand, we nodded, and then listened to the doctor. The moment is embedded in my mind in a freeze frame.
    Dr. Marks, a man of great compassion and incredible intellect, offered support, but got right to the point.
    â€œYou need to take the diagnosis seriously,” he counseled me in front of my wife, having been prepped in advance on my aversion to reality. “You have a battle ahead of you. I’m speaking to you as if you were terminal. Are you getting this?”
    I was. There was hardly a tone of political correctness in his voice; I needed the reality check. You must know your enemy—study with military precision—to fight your enemy.
    Alzheimer’s is a death sentence. The words resonatedthroughout my mind. I stared at Dr. Marks with the same vacant expression of looking out from the Sagamore. I felt the tears running down the sides of my face.