Flickering Light

Polls say it’s the most feared health concern for those over fifty. Dementia is the umbrella term for a syndrome that covers a number of distinct diseases. There’s no sugarcoating it.

Widow Susan Schneider Williams labeled one such disease as “the terrorist inside my husband’s brain” (focus article: The Terrorist In The Brain). The referenced husband was Robin Williams. The fact that the brain powering one of the greatest verbal high-wire acts could be hollowed out within a couple of years might tempt the mere mortal to become hypervigilant for early telltale signs like forgetting a name, a verbal gaffe, or mistaking your wife for a hat.

The above-identified Lewy body dementia is but the second most common neurodegenerative disease, representing somewhere between five and fifteen percent of cases, often mistaken for something else.

There’s then the most common Alzheimer’s disease that strikes later in life with its signature loss of short-term memory followed by frontotemporal dementia which attacks in middle age with one variant featuring primary progressive aphasia that dismantles language processing along with a behavioural variant that can radically affect personality, often in bizarre ways (still seeking cases in which a former naturally cantankerous subject suddenly exudes warmth).

We might start our discussion by comparing views on the meaning of selfhood, personhood, memory, and agency when cognition declines i.e. what is the self, does personhood survive severe dementia, how should society respond? On the one hand, you are your life narrative. Your life narrative – embedded in your memory – is you. The failure of memory, therefore, represents the ultimate existential threat: the prospect of your nullity.

On the other hand, the idea of personhood is based less on raw memory than on relationships i.e. we are beings-in-the-world rather than beings-in-the-head. The mind is but one component of the self, seen in terms of its connection to the body, to others, to the outside world. The matter of dementia, then, provides a crash course in the philosophy of the mind that goes to the heart of best practices in dealing with patients and their caretakers as they address the question of what it means to be human.

A sense of self that transcends the mind has profound implications when that mind begins to fade. Not to push the analogy too far but even as the hard drive flickers the software of emotion continues to beckon in the way, for example, the power of music can ignite connective energy. Same with dance.

So what is your relationship with dementia whether it be that of a concerned individual, caretaker, or simple observer of the human condition?

Please note the following RSVP Policy for Member Monday: RSVP sign-up opens up at 11:00am on Fridays via the City Club weekly Newsletter. Seats are first-come, first-served: the first 14 secure a spot at the table, the last 3 on the couch. Cancellations must be made 24 hours in advance or the standard Social Lunch rate applies.