For years, my biggest single fear has been Alzheimer's disease.
This is probably silly on my part, because Alzheimer's is not part of my family's history. My mother, at age 97, has serious memory loss, but it is not Alzheimer's. She just cannot remember anything that took place longer than about 30 seconds ago. She knows who she is. She is functional. But she talks on the phone for less than three minutes, and she used to talk on the phone for 60 minutes. I would not want to get this disease, but it came late in her life.
Alzheimer's victims do not know how afflicted they are. They lose perception. This offsets the worst of the symptoms.
After thinking it over, I no longer think Alzheimer's is the biggest threat. A debilitating stroke is.
Of course, there are variations in the severity of strokes. Some people may lose physical mobility, but they can still talk. Their brains are still sharp, but they have a mobility problem. Others lose their ability to speak clearly. That would be frustrating, but not terrifying.
A friend of mine is 69. He is one of the nation's leading trial lawyers, and he also has an advanced degree in neurophysiology. He was also the best bluegrass banjo player in the West Coast in the late 1960's, and a studio guitarist in the early 1970's, pioneering a new form of music called country rock. In a recent exchange, he sent me a link to a last-performance song by Glen Campbell. Campbell is suffering from Alzheimer's. I had seen a CBS Sunday Morning segment on this. Obviously, this is a depressing thought. His song has had over 9 million hits, for good reason. It's title tells all: "I'm Not Gonna Miss You."
I responded: "It would be worse to have a stroke, I think: locked in your own body." Then he responded.
On the stroke issue, I did try a case a few years ago where the plaintiff was a 39-year-old woman who had a midbrain (pontine) stroke, and was "locked in", such that she could only move two fingers of her left hand, and make a few unintelligible noises. It was truly scary.
In prisons, the worst negative sanction that the administration can impose is solitary confinement. Consider the mental effects of solitary confinement in your own body for 40 years or longer. This would not be simply frustrating. This would be terrifying. It might lead to insanity.
I have been giving some thought to what I would want my caretakers to do for me if I were ever in this kind of shape.
The first thing that I would want would be some sense of purpose for the remainder of my life. I would want the caretaker to put a computer screen in front of me. On that screen would be a series of prayers for other people which would rotate on a regular basis every three minutes or so. I believe in prayer, so I regard it as something positive to do during imprisonment. I would recommend the same thing for prison inmates and old people who are stuck in convalescent homes. This computer would be on 24 hours a day.
I would also want to listen to music. That can be done easily by hooking up to Pandora or one of the other rotating music outlets. That could be run through a second computer, such as a tablet. It would not have to be sitting up in front of me. I would appreciate it if they would pay the monthly fee, so I would not have to listen to the ads. That would be a humane thing to do. Twice a day, in 90-minute segments, I would want somebody to put a pair of comfortable stereo headphones on my head, so that I could listen to the music. I happen to prefer the sound of closed-ear headphones, so nobody else would have to listen to it. I would want classical music in the morning, and bluegrass in the afternoon. Big band jazz and Dixieland would be for Saturdays. I like variation.
There would be a third computer. On that computer would be pages of history books or economic books, with each page on screen for about two minutes: one hour per book. This would repeat. Repetition is basic to effective learning. Then the next book would pick up where it left off the day before. I would be able to learn something if I got tired of reviewing prayers. That would give me hope that, someday, I would be able to regain my mobility, or at least my speech, and I would have something to show for it.
At the end of the day, they would hook up this learning computer to Amazon movies. Old MGM musicals would be fine. I would get one Jimmy Stewart movie every month, one Busby Berkeley musical, and one dancing movie with either Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. Then they would tune in Encore Westerns overnight.
Basically, I would want visual inputs. I would want my brain stimulated. I would not expect somebody to come and read to me every day. I would like to hear news about the family at least once a week.
It would be nice to have my wife come in at dinner time and chat about what she was doing. Half an hour would be enough. It would be at the same time every day. I think the day should be orderly.
I would want to watch a news broadcast at least once a day. I suppose I would watch Alex Jones. That would be more lively than the other broadcasts. But I would have this rule: I would want one week's delay. That way, I could console myself by thinking that the forces of truth and justice would by then have reversed the latest machinations of the bad guys.
If I could move my finger, I would want a button to press. The button would let me call somebody to come in. I would point to one of three media devices listed on a sheet of paper. That way, I could control whether I am listening to music, watching old movies, or reading a book. They would put on the appropriate headphones, or take them off, according to what I wanted to do.
You might think about this yourself. You will not be able to give instructions after the stroke hits. Write down some instructions.
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