Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 03, 2022

She wants what’s best for you.

My father last months were like this: sometime present and sometime in his world. This year he would be 100 and I miss him. I like that I often dream of him.

When my father was taken by ambulance to the hospice for his last week or two he queried why as he didn’t think there was anything wrong with him.

The first sign I encountered is not to know what time of day it is. Then the confusion worsened. So, Lacey should become confused as to the time of day, such as getting up at midnight, even though it’s obviously dark.

This is a very sad arc. I wonder if there’s been any improvement in the treatment of dementia since it first ran.

This could have been a conversation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, only Lacey Davenport (based on Millicent Fenwick) is a much nicer person. The US Congress is largely a gerontocracy, appropriate given how decrepit as well as corrupt US government has become, with a constitution no longer fit for purpose.

My grandfather had Alzheimer’s. They called it hardening of the arteries, but I think it was too many years of 1900s Nebraska leather helmet football.

I wonder what my hospice care will be like. I suspect it will be like being back in the barracks but with a lot less shit can rolling and reveille but a lot more Taps.

The brain is a wondrous thing, and medicine still doesn’t know how we get from brain to mind.

The problem with any kind of dementia is that, if the brain can’t remember something, the mind doesn’t know it.

My mother had a really sharp mind, but when she got dementia, she couldn’t remember not only what she’d had for lunch, but if she’d eaten at all. I used to watch old movies with her, because she remembered them.

Joanie MUST realize by now that she was wasting her breath.

Watching my mother disappear from dementia ALMOST makes me hope for the cancer that took my father.

And unfortunately, this 1997 arc is entirely too relevant to today’s news: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/report-dianne-feinstein-memory-rapidly-deteriorating

You could cry for Lacey.She lived her whole life with dignity and she’s denied it at the end.

I follow newatlas(.)com There is lots of promising research but not ready for human trials. Since April I’ve changed my focus to prostate cancer.

YEs – sometimes Doonesbury is funny and sometimes just poignant. As far as improvements of the treatment of dementia since this first ran, I believe they ARE improving.

What we have at this point are palliatives for the sufferers and counseling for their loved ones. We’re gradually working our way toward treatment. Cure is still a long ways off. Of course, the ideal is prevention, but nobody really knows how we’d do that, either.

I fear it may already be too late…

I wonder if Dr DEMENTO still ends his shows with “ and don’t forget to stay demented!!!”

I see I’m not the only one to see the parallel between this old strip and what’s happening with California’s own Senator Dianne Feinstein. (Not to mention most of the males in the Senate.) It’s a dire situation, and not at all as charming as this strip makes it appear. America is on the verge of collapse because of their senility.