My grandma Dolly, was a spitfire. A tiny little sprite of a human. Truly, she was less than five feet tall and full of laughter, energy and strength. She raised 4 boys (all within 2 years of age) and 2 girls on the bitterly cold Montana ranch she filled with warmth and love. She had nearly 20 grandkids and if she were alive today just about as many great grand kids. She was fierce.
My memories of her are wrapped up in music, singing and dancing, baking cookies and playing around. Of Shirley Temple and John Wayne and Que Cera coming from her smiling slips. Then there are the ones that are memories from stories, like when she drove her honking big car into town with little five year old Lindsay in tow, parked her car in the middle of road as we went in shopping to get the makings for cookies and exclaimed to the cop who questioned her that maybe she would let me drive us home then...that was one early sign of her future decline.
Memories of her are fuzzy now. She passed away so so long ago. And the essence of her has been lost even longer. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in the early-90s and she ultimately passed away in January 2000. Her decline was rapid and painful to witness. I was so little but I vividly remember crying burning hot tears about her not remembering who I was when we went to see her in the facility she was at. In my young, love filled mind, I believed I was so special to her that she could never forget me.
I have spent nearly fifteen years working in mental health. Learning about the brain. Learning about memories. Teaching myself and others how to protect our brains, bodies and relationships. During this time I have learned that Alzheimer's is primarily diagnosed in females, it has high correlation to heart disease and type two diabetes, that lack of sleep in certain times of life may increase your chances of developing it, as well as having too low of vitamin D levels. Not only can eating a balanced brain health diet and getting exercise outdoors improve your mental health today, it can decrease your changes of developing this costly degenerative disease.
Alzheimer's research has changed a lot since those days of Dolly's first becoming stories we told instead of experiences we lived. This year I am hoping to draw upon all of the energy that she lived her life with, to run a marathon in her honor. Please consider supporting me and more research for new treatments and diagnosis tool to help kids keep their loved ones longer than I got to have mine.
Additional material about this degenerative disease can be found here:
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