A writer talks about his battle with Alzheimer's. His wife helps him find the words
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Lisa Miller
Newsweek
Updated: 3:26 a.m. ET June 13, 2004
June 13 - One morning, when he was 57 years old, Thomas DeBaggio went to open his home business and he couldn’t recognize the cash register. A series of doctor’s visits led to the diagnosis: early-onset Alzheimer’s. DeBaggio, a former journalist, decided not to drift quietly away, but to write it all down—the fury and frustration, the pieces of memory, the slow disintigration of his daily functioning—and in 2002, he published “Losing My Mind”, an extraordinary account of an individual observing the erosion of his very self. Now, five years after his diagnosis, DeBaggio can no longer write a sentence or drive a car and Joyce, his wife of 40 years, is looking after him. Newsweek’s Lisa Miller spoke with the DeBaggios about living with Alzheimer’s.
advertisement
NEWSWEEK: What things can you still do? TOM: I can cook dinner. JOYCE: Not as well— TOM: To do it, I have to ask Joyce where the things are. Right now I’m in the kitchen, I recognize all these things, but I couldn’t tell you what they are. That thing over there, it says “Magic Chef,” I don’t know what to call that. JOYCE: The stove? TOM: That’s a stove, yes. JOYCE: He still can go to the grocery store for me, with a list, and get things that are familiar: yogurt, or peanut butter or apples.
NEWSWEEK: What can’t you do? JOYCE: He can’t hold a thought long enough to write it down. His reading is not pleasurable anymore. I used to love to hear him read to me but now it’s painful, like listening to a third grader. TOM: That’s what it is. Instead of getting older, you’re going back into time, like you’re a little kid.
NEWSWEEK: What do you do for pleasure? TOM: I don’t get any pleasure. I’ve worked hard all my life at different things. When I got Alzheimer’s there wasn’t much help for me, there wasn’t much I could do.
NEWSWEEK: This must be so frustrating for you, Joyce.
JOYCE: I’m an artist and I used to work late at night. I haven’t done any real work in five years. At first, I just needed to be with him, I just couldn’t be away. Then he would have nightmares and I never knew when he was going to get up and wander around. It’s going to get worse. My doctor says I’m in denial about what he’s going to need.
NEWSWEEK: What’s your opinion on stem-cell research? TOM: The sooner they get it, the better. It could turn me into the person I was before, that’s what it’s supposed to do.
NEWSWEEK: Is there anything else you want to say? TOM: We have a cat. We have two cats. We’re worrying a little bit about one of them. She’s not eating well, she just leaves the food. She’s my baby. It’s a great comfort to me to have an animal like that. I have all these things whirling around in my brain all the time, just these things, they pop in and out, images and words and remembrances, they just pop in my head and can’t tell me anything.
