That was 13 year's ago. Nord and I are on the right path! Does he still stop in here?
Whenever his name is mentioned.
Kgtest, Nords posted on this thread back in the beginning.
Well, I’m subscribed to this thread, and I usually stop by every week or so to search for keywords.
Bingo.
I feel so much more pure and healthy since I quit drinking. I hope I have the right support later in life if dementia sets in to stay pure. Time will tell.
What an insightful article!
To be clear, I stopped drinking when I realized that alcohol was a lethal combination with my father’s early-stage Alzheimer’s. When he showed signs of early dementia, he refused all help from my brother and me and insisted on continuing to live alone in his apartment.
His short-term memory loss of what he’d drunk meant that he kept drinking until he passed out in his recliner without eating dinner. When he finally burned an ulcerous hole in his digestive system, it was clear that he could no longer live independently. He was malnourished, underweight, and had lost his muscle tone. The surgeon saw the classic symptoms of alcoholism and, after more interviews of Dad, the surgeon updated his diagnosis to Alzheimer’s.
You submarine veterans know what we can do with equipment logs. While Dad was in the recovery room and I was catching up on his unpaid bills, I did the math on his credit-card charges at the Liquor Barn. (He only had six months of charge receipts.) He’d also largely stopped buying groceries and his refrigerator was nearly empty. His calories were coming from lunch at a local restaurant a few times a week... and from alcohol.
I’m not sure we can confirm that alcohol accelerates dementia, but the dementia certainly affected his alcohol habits.
I was 50 years old when Dad’s surgeon described how they’d nearly lost him on the operating table. By then I’d already noticed that if I had two beers with dinner, I didn’t accomplish anything constructive with the rest of the evening. It was also slowing my performance at taekwondo and prolonging my recovery from workouts.
Even worse, it was waking me up at night from both my bladder and my blood-sugar levels.
My father’s father also spent 14 years in a care facility with dementia. My paternal genome is not my destiny, but I think it makes sense to leave my old alcohol habits behind me. As I tell my family & friends, “I’ve drunk my lifetime quota of alcohol-- and most of your lifetime quota too.”
And i can't edit it now.
But I'm done with that.
