Heartbreakingly, I may have played my last game of enjoyable pickleball.
The Alzheimer’s Association outlines three stages of Alzheimer’s Disease: early, middle and late. The first stage is Mild Cognitive Impairment, which is characterized by “early stage of memory loss or other cognitive ability loss (such as language or visual/spatial perception) in individuals who maintain the ability to independently perform most activities of daily living.” Please note, not all cases of MCI progress to Alzheimer’s disease. There are many other causes of MCI.
The middle stage is marked by more pronounced dementia, including confusion, frustration, anger, and difficulty expressing thoughts and performing routine tasks without assistance. I don’t even want to think about the final stage yet.
In my case, my MCI is a result of Alzheimer’s disease as evidenced by my genetic profile and many test results. I’m assured by medical folks that I’m still in the MCI stage, though I know I exhibit some of the middle-stage symptoms.
Ordinarily, MCI comes in a series of plateaus followed by declines. When the MCI is a result of underlying Alzheimer’s disease, as mine is, the trajectory is always downward. My goal is to extend the plateaus for as long as possible before the next decline. I was experiencing decline at the time I wrote some of my previous guest columns in The Durango Herald. Though, I am constantly grieving the losses I’m experiencing. Currently, I’m on a plateau.
Aside from continuing depression, lack of sleep and anxiety, at moments, I almost feel like I don’t have the disease. (That’s a little Alzheimer’s joke, folks). My ability to communicate is good in small groups, but in larger noisy groups I’m not good at all. I experience anxiety attacks, in part, because I can’t keep up with conversations.
Unfortunately, I’ve experienced a slip in physical function. After a lifetime of enjoying sports (I’ve played tennis since I was a young teen and even competed in college tennis for a year), I seem to have lost the ability to play pickleball and tennis. Before the slip, I played pickleball most mornings and enjoyed the camaraderie of friends, playing with my husband, and the endorphin rush and exhilaration of playing just to play. Now the top half of my body seems disconnected from the bottom half.
I’m currently working with a neurologist, to find the most effective drug treatment for my sleep disorder and depression, and to a physical therapist to retrain my brain, if possible. I hope we come onto something that works soon because I’m tired of feeling tired, sad and restless. I’m bored. Not playing sports every day affects my need to stay active.
I want to embody what my good friend Mary Lou who told me years ago. After shoulder surgery at 80, if she couldn’t play golf or tennis anymore, she would have more time for other things she loved. She became a master bridge player and deacon at her church by age 90.
I’m trying to think of what I can turn to in order to fill my gaps. I’m a social person and I grieve losing this part of me. Though I won’t live to 101, as Mary Lou did, I want to be able to adapt with grace and humor about my changing conditions. I have serious doubts I will have any grace at all in these passages because I grow less and less patient, and more frustrated daily. I know I am slipping downward and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. But I’m clinging to the plateaus as they come.
Kim Martin splits her time between Hesperus and Durango, and is a former instructor of Asian history, writing and comparative cultures at Fort Lewis College.
