Episode Three: Learning From a Father

Wayne MacPhail: Talk for Memories, podcast number three. Hello, and welcome to the third podcast in our Talk for Memories series. I'm your host, Wayne MacPhail. In this series, I'll be interviewing people with Alzheimer's disease and related disorders and their caregivers across Ontario. Gerry McKee is a former broadcaster, now living in Ottawa with his wife, Joan. Gerry is dealing with early onset Alzheimer's disease. He's also watched as his father wrestled with the disorder just after his retirement. I was curious about Gerry's relationship with his father, so I begin our conversation by asking him about his father and how he deals with the familial spectre of a future with Alzheimer's.

Gerry McKee: My father was a very proud man, and when he was first diagnosed, it was such a tremendous shock to him, that we as a family wondered whether he'd survive very long. He did. He survived for a reasonable amount of time, but when people are very full of pride, it does hit them with a bigger bash than those people who -- and I see myself in the group -- that have the luck to have had somebody ahead of me. So that when it came up, I was able to deal with it more simply than my father who had never. He lived with the life of "I've never made a mistake in my life and I've never had anything happen to me in my life," and suddenly he was wandering around the house, and doing things that were very strange.

Wayne: And what age was he when that happened to him?

Gerry: He was 65. He, it was just at the time that he was retiring. He was a Sun Life person for many, many years, and at the age of 65, he retired. And within the next matter of less than two years, he went from being a person who could go to work everyday, did his work and was certainly well-respected at his work, and he came home to retire. And he picked up his hobby, which was carpentry. And he loved to do things with carpentry, and now he had all of the time in the world to do that. And he found, he stumbled upon the fact, that he was having difficulty doing that, and it broke his heart.

Wayne: And when you say it broke his heart and it was a shock to him, was it an emotional shock, or did he manifest it physically as well?

Gerry: No, physically he looked exactly the same as he always had. He still had a sense of humour, but he did not have a sense of how to deal with being second-class. My brother and I were brought up to believe that he never made a mistake in his life, except for two occasions which led to our being born. And that's, you know this was the kind of man that he was, and if he was discovered in a mistake, he had a great deal of difficulty in covering it up. And he wanted to cover things. I say to people that you know, "Take your mistakes. The foot went forward, you fell off the sidewalk. Whatever has happened, just pick yourself up and smile." My dad picked himself up and cried, and it was a terrible tragedy in the family.

Wayne: Now, how did you and your brother and your mother help him cope with that pride and shame?

Gerry: My mother was somewhat typical of what I see with females dealing with males with Alzheimer, and that is that they want to love them and help them. But there is not enough training out there to have the caregiver really understand how they can deal with this. I'm not sure that it's done properly in a lot of cases, because I've heard this expression from the alternate, the spouse. "Oh, there's nothing wrong with you. Just get on with things, and forget about it." My mother took that approach. I probably took that approach, but I look over to the situation with my own spouse. She understood early that my pride was being affected, and she supported me and supported me in doing many things and continues to do that. And it's that caring that has made it such a comfortable road that I've been able to continue on. Whereas, there are, and I'm sure I have seen many other cases where you know the spouse hasn't accepted. And indeed the Society, the Alzheimer Society does work on that aspect of dealing with Alzheimer's, and at the time that my father was, became an Alzheimer patient, there was nothing, there was nowhere to go to get help.

Wayne: So you feel there's, you've got sort of two advantages, then. One that you've had the advantage of the experience of seeing how your father, with his pride -- which it sounds like you've inherited a bit from what you were just saying. You said that your pride was injured -- and also -- that you've got the advantage that the Alzheimer Society has support for spouses now that I guess your wife has, and you have taken advantage of.

Gerry:  Exactly, and that's, to me that was the, that's been the key for me to continue to live and not worry about some of the dumb mistakes that I make along the way.

Wayne: Now talk to me about those dumb mistakes, and how you first started noticing that there was a problem with your memory, and how you first sort of thought back to what your dad went through and that there might be a relationship there.

Gerry: Let me tell you when I was first diagnosed what happened. I was going in for open heart surgery. The first step before you go in for open heart surgery is you go to a clinical psychologist whose role it was to find out a baseline of my mental condition before the operation would take place so that when you come out, they have something to measure how well you're doing. And she asked me to draw a picture of a house in perspective. I could not draw it. I had a terrible time, you know, drawing the, you know, the peak of the roof and the lines down. I'm drawing them on the paper in front of me, on the desk in front of me. And I drew the lines down, and I couldn't get the lines of the house to make it look like it was a house. I ended up with, you know, two showing gables which doesn't happen. And she could see the frustration that was coming out. And that was the day I was introduced to Alzheimer.

Wayne: And when did you relate it to what happened to your dad?

Gerry: Quite soon. Because I was starting to act like him, except that I didn't respond like him. I was responding by saying, "I have this trouble." My father responded by saying, "I don't have any trouble." This was the very first lesson for me. I'm prepared, I was prepared to say from virtually day one, "I'm not able to do this," and that, you know, for people in our family was just the kind of thing you never said. I said it and I started it, I started to discuss it with people right away. On the other hand, my mind also told me, "Don't make a nuisance of yourself" because if you're not careful, people just don't want to talk to you anymore, because you natter. Well I wasn't, I didn't become a natterer, I became one who tried to take opportunities to say, you know, "I can see that I can't do this and I'm not able to operate in this environment at this moment, and so I accept that this isn't something that I can do at this moment. I could probably get up tomorrow and maybe I could do it," and I went through quite a period when I tried to see, I was trying to see how far I could push myself. And I learned how to pull back and more reasonably accept that I could not do everything.

Wayne: One of the things I found interesting when we were talking about setting up this interview, was that you said that we should do the interview early in the day, because you're more alert early in the day. So what happens during the course of the day?

Gerry: Well, by evening, I'm really, I really don't want to get involved with having to think. I feel more comfortable talking about things and being able to recall things when I get up in the morning than I do starting in fairly early afternoon, and by nighttime, I'd rather just wait till tomorrow to talk about the next item. I don't, I no longer read at night, because I just, I find that I don't absorb very much, and quite frankly I don't think I absorb as much now as I used to at any time of the day. But I still want to be on top of, to the extent I can, of what's going on around me.

Wayne: Now, you've had the opportunity of seeing what happened to your dad once he got diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and you can look into the past and remember that. So what do you imagine for your future and what's that like for you?

Gerry: I don't think about it to the extent that I don't worry about what's going to happen when I get worse. And whenever I speak to groups, I try, I remind people that you should live for today, deal with the issues of today, and if you can find ways or as we say in French, trucs, which are really tricks, except that tricks is pejorative in English. That there are ways to continue on and do things, but as soon as you, when you reach that point where you know when you're not able to get involved in events for example, don't get involved in them. Don't push, don't push yourself, and this is where mates have problems, sometimes. You know, I've seen in the Society, in other patients, and I see spouses speaking sharply to their mate. I have to be very careful, because I don't like to make too many comments. But sometimes it gets to me to the point where I will say to them, "You know, you're not helping anybody. You're not helping your husband, or you're not helping your wife by making her feel badly at this point."

Wayne: Right. Now if you could go back in time and talk to your father when he first was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, when he was dealing with the issues of pride, knowing what you know now about Alzheimer's, what would you say to him?

Gerry: I would say the same thing to him as I say to people today. This is something that is a medical question. You're dealing with a medical issue. You don't have any control over that, but you do have control over your mouth. And be careful what you say to people. And there's no reason to condemn yourself because of something that is happening to you in the course of nature.

Wayne: Now it sounds like your father had not a very good time of dealing with Alzheimer's, and it sounds like he didn't make things very pleasant for the family when that happened. So what do you take from that? What did you learn from that?

Gerry: I, that's an interesting, I've never thought of that question in that way. I also have to just digress. I had to in a sense deal with my mother on that issue. Because my father was quite arrogant, and he never, I can't say that he ever really accepted the fact that it was Alzheimer. And it was quite difficult for my mother, and I've acted as sort of a barrier between the two of them. But it's so far back now, that I can't, I don't see the details.

Wayne: Is there any lessons you take from it, do you think?

Gerry: Well, I think that the lessons, the lessons that I take from it is that you must continue to live life as it comes to you, so I'm quite content to have lived the life that I lived and I continue to, you know, we continue to enjoy every day.

Wayne: Well, I'm glad you do, and I'm glad you took the time to talk to me today, and thank you very much for sharing so honestly with me.

Gerry: Very good.

Wayne: Bye-bye.

Gerry: Thanks for calling. Good-bye.

Wayne: No problem. Bye-bye. And that's it for this, the third edition of Talk for Memories. My thanks to Gerry McKee for sharing his feelings with me -- and thank you for listening. Now it's time for Word to Remember.* This time out, the word is "carpentry." You will recall that that was the hobby Gerry's father looked forward to in retirement. Keep that word in mind and visit www.alzheimerontario.org/talkformemories to enter our Word to Remember contest. Just e-mail us the Word to Remember. You could win one of six iPod shuffles. Good luck. If you'd like to learn more about Alzheimer's disease and related disorders, please visit www.alzheimerontario.org, or call the Alzheimer Society of Ontario at 1-800-879-4226. Stay tuned for the next podcast in this series coming soon, and remember you can subscribe so these podcasts will arrive automatically right on your computer. If you're using iTunes to listen to these podcasts, we've made the subscription easy. Just click on the purple iTunes button at the top right of the Talk for Memories page. You'll be taken directly to the Talk for Memories section of iTunes, and you can subscribe there with one click. I'm Wayne MacPhail. Talk for Memories is an Alzheimer Society of Ontario production. Good-bye for now.

* This interview was conducted in January, 2006. This contest is now closed. Please learn more about Manulife Walk for Memories here.

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