Friday Flames | 3.29.24

A weekly synopsis of what we figured out about Alzheimer's, serial killers, glaucoma, Mondoshawans, and skydiving beavers.

From Magda: Fighting my family history with Alzheimer's

By now, you may know that I plan to stay on Menopause Hormone Treatment (MHT) for the rest of my life, and not just because it has fixed everything from hot flashes to insomnia to hearing issues to the weird feeling of just not fitting into my skin anymore. The real reason I started MHT during menopause was to protect against dementia—specifically, Alzheimer's.

My dad's mom, my Mamama, started having noticeable symptoms of dementia in her 70s. You can’t really confirm Alzheimer’s until after a patient dies, but by the time Mamama was diagnosed she didn’t remember my kids’ names consistently anymore. There were many years of dementia we never acknowledged, because we all knew she'd always been so cranky and vindictive. But who knows how hard "always" had been working in that sentence? What if it was menopause and her body's loss of estrogen that made her cranky and vindictive, and then the hormone-accelerated metabolic syndrome that transformed her from the va-va-voom sweater girl my grandfather drew cartoons of into someone's apple-shaped, peasant-boned grandmother? When you’ve spent your life charming people and suddenly found your charms were gone and all you could offer was stuffed cabbage rolls, how do you take that in stride? I’d be deeply angry and resentful, too.

And then the same thing that steals your body and self-esteem steals your mind, too, and you start experiencing anger flares and memory loss and processing glitches.

In that liminal period between the start of her dementia and diagnosis, she came to visit me and Doug and our toddler in New York City. She'd never been before, so my mother, her daughter-in-law, came with her. It was August, when NYC is emptiest, and we planned a lovely, great-grandmother-paced itinerary of classic tourist activities that can be done easily with a toddler in tow. But August is also when the sanitation employees take vacation time, and the garbage bundles that usually get collected twice a week can sit for three or four days in a row, stinking in the heat and humidity. And Mamama was fixated on it.

We took her to Washington Square. We rode the Staten Island Ferry. We took her to eat borscht at Veselka. But all Mamama wanted to talk about was the garbage. She couldn't believe it was piled so high on the curbs. She couldn't believe no one picked it up. She couldn't believe people walked right past it. She couldn't believe the smell. Twenty years later, my mother and I still joke about how New York is filled with garbage! And it just sits there!

No one was surprised by Mamama's diagnosis, but we didn’t expect her to live for ten more years. During that time, we'd visit her in the memory care facility and make the visits as short as possible. It didn't matter how long we were there, because even though she didn't know who we were and we had nothing to say to each other, just seeing us made her feel good.

My dad visited infrequently, maybe once a month, for two hours at a time. At the time, I thought he couldn't accept that her memory was gone. I was sure he thought that if he talked with her long enough, she'd somehow snap out of it and become his mom again, the mom he still needed, and not the old lady in the wheelchair who no longer recognized his face.

Now, though, I think he also feared that this would be him someday. Unable to connect to the people who loved him. A programmer and database architect, he'd programmed his way into and out of so many dodgy situations in the past, including the Y2K mess, that if anyone could figure out how to restore a corrupted database, it was him. But he just couldn’t crack it.

For years, any time my dad couldn't remember a word or misplaced an item, he'd ask, "Do you think I'm getting Alzheimer's?" And I’d always reply, "No, Dad. You're not angry enough." But we now realize that Mamama’s anger stemmed more from her menopause, and my dad actually was in the early stages before his own Alzheimer's diagnosis, which he got two summers ago, when he was 75.

And I think part of him felt relief, because finally, the other shoe had dropped. Finally, we could all talk about it and take steps to slow it down, even though he knows there's no secret program we can run to preserve the part of him that's really him.

This is why I take MHT willingly, happily, every day. I love how MHT protects me against bone loss and heart disease. I like that it's helping with the joint pain I was starting to have. But I would be on MHT anyway, even without those benefits, and even if the risk factors were strong. If I ever lose the ability to connect with my children, the essence of me will gone. And I know there's no secret program my database developer husband can run to preserve the part of me that's really me.

Time is ticking for me to outrun this. It's not too late.

Embers in the News

Here are some of the links that peeked through the noisy news cycle this week:

• Optic nerves can grow back Researchers have determined a protein that stimulates regrowth of optic nerve cells damaged by glaucoma.

• No social media for Florida tweens A new Florida law says a child’s brain development can’t handle the addictive technology.

• Another reason to breastfeed, if you can Pregnancy ages your body’s DNA, but the effects are reversible—sometimes to even “younger” than before

• Replenishing the ecosystem Please enjoy this footage from 1948 of skydiving beavers

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This week on the podcast

Amanda Magee

missed her oldest daughter desperately after she left for college, in part because Amanda is still processing her difficult decision to stop talking to her mother.

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Currently reading

Magda finished My Sister, The Serial Killer by Okinyan Braithwaite, and it wasn't what she expected at all. She is currently reading Beth Raymer's memoir, Lay The Favourite, and enjoying the view into the lives of professional gamblers.

Doug found a copy of Mr. Strangelove, a more definitive biography of one of entertainment’s weirdest, most disturbed people. The interest stemmed from this footage of his fling with Liza Minnelli; all those fervent declarations of love, and it lasted a month. Entertaining mostly for fans and rubberneckers.

Currently watching

Doug is watching The Curse, which is one of those unnerving shows where the creators, Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, establish early on that they’re prepared to address myriad human frailties by taking the story into the most off-puttingly awkward places. Hang in until the end, but in small doses and through your fingers.

Magda discovered that Mike has never seen The Fifth Element, so she's about to make him watch it with her. (Doug is appalled by this oversight and applauds its resolution.)

Currently cooking

The arrival of Thomas has kicked Magda's mothering into active status again. This week she's made turkey chili verde, chicken pot pie, scallion tofu dumplings with homemade wrappers, and baked pasta. Her plan for Easter dinner is raw carrot salad, kuku sabzi, snackleback potatoes, roasted turkey breast, and a pavlova for dessert.

The departure of Thomas has kicked Doug’s restaurant appreciation into active status again. This week he has been out to dinner four times, and his kitchen remains spotless and undisturbed.

Next on the podcast

We don’t know, frankly. We’re going to start with our ambivalent feelings about this new Florida law, which will supposedly enforce the age restrictions that social media platforms won’t. But from there, who knows?

Thanks for reading, and you’re a monster, Zorg.

Magda and Doug