Curses on the causes of Alzheimer's

 

                First, it was Virginia Russell, one of the most educated, intelligent, civic-minded women in Bryant. Why her? I asked at the time of her death. Since then, a high school classmate, who spent her entire career as an executive secretary at the Pentagon, contracted lewy bodies. Next, a relative has been diagnosed with onset dementia. And I just heard that another classmate (’54) is now a resident of a nursing home in Hot Springs.

Then Robin Williams. And now Miller Williams, who (in my opinion) should have been Arkansas’s poet laureate, if not the national laureate.

Why them and not me? Or Dot? Or Freeda? Or Bill? Or a million others?

            So I went online to the Mayo Clinic website. Here is what I found:

Scientists believe that for most people, Alzheimer's disease results from a combination of genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors that affect the brain over time.

Although the causes of Alzheimer's are not yet fully understood, its effect on the brain is clear. Alzheimer's disease damages and kills brain cells. A brain affected by Alzheimer's disease has many fewer cells and many fewer connections among surviving cells than does a healthy brain.

As more and more brain cells die, Alzheimer's leads to significant brain shrinkage. When doctors examine Alzheimer's brain tissue under the microscope, they see two types of abnormalities that are considered hallmarks of the disease:

PLAQUES. These clumps of a protein called beta-amyloid may damage and destroy brain cells in several ways, including interfering with cell-to-cell communication. Although the ultimate cause of brain-cell death in Alzheimer's isn't known, the collection of beta-amyloid on the outside of brain cells is a prime suspect.

TANGLES. Brain cells depend on an internal support and transport system to carry nutrients and other essential materials throughout their long extensions. This system requires the normal structure and functioning of a protein called tau.

In Alzheimer's, threads of tau protein twist into abnormal tangles inside brain cells, leading to failure of the transport system. This failure is also strongly implicated in the decline and death of brain cells.

Here are three poems of Miller Williams from his book, Some Jazz a While: Collected Poems published in 1999 by University of Illinois Press.

  IT’S HARD TO THINK THE BRAIN 

 a ball of ropey dough

should have invented pain

or come to know

 

how there are things we lend

a fragile credence to

and hope to comprehend

but never do.

 

AND THEN I HEADED ON BACK HOME 

I went to New York and went to the poet’s address,

four flights up in a building with clean windows.

He asked what I wanted. He didn’t open the door.

I told him I liked his poems and came to say so.

He said if that’s true I thank you very much.

I told him his milk was out there getting warm.

 

               
TRYING TO REMEMBER 

You know in the muddy pond the fish is there. 
It bumps the bait and late in the long shadows
it nudges a brief circle over the surface. 
Give it up. It will die in the dark water.

##PL