Alzheimer's has affected people I care about for a long time; my maternal
Grandmother (or as I knew her, Grandma Tootsie) and my paternal Grandfather (who didn't have a nickname, but did have a great sense of humor), both had Alzheimer's and passed away in the 1990s.
I first noticed that my dad might have some signs of Alzheimer's when my parents came to visit me in New Jersey and my dad had some issues finding the hotel from my apartment, even though they were less than 3 blocks away from each other. I don't want to say that's why I finally got married after living together for almost 10 years, but it sort of is (of course, having an awesome guy to marry played a strong part in this decision also!). I really wanted my dad to be there for it.
Anyhow, I am going to try to keep this story mostly about the last year and how running and Alzheimer's fit together. I'm sure if you asked me tomorrow, I might take a different approach.
In early 2010, I stayed with my parents while my mom had surgery and was out of commission as my dad's caregiver. Anyhow, in the year so so leading up to this, I had gained a lot of weight and felt pretty worried about my parents, and while I still was riding my bike to work, I wasn't very healthy myself.
At one point during this trip, I was helping my dad with something, and having trouble myself, and it occurred to me that unless I took care of myself, I wasn't really going to be able to help anyone in the future. When I got home to New Jersey, I started with a Couch to 5k Running app on my iPhone, and it was awesome. I am sort of Facebook addict, and it would post my runs to Facebook, and it really helped to have people encouraging me on.
Besides feeling a bit healthier after trying to start running, I found running was really awesome in other ways. Being by myself without a lot of distractions was a great way to clear my head, and I spent a lot of the time thinking about my dad. You can also listen to the cheesiest songs and feel sad or happy or inspired, while thinking about things, which was great. I think I had a lot of imaginary conversations with my dad when I was running (and still do!), and some of them were like "Can you believe I just ran 3 miles?"
So! At some pointt, I found out about the Alzheimer's Association Marathon team and was really inspired, and also spent a lot of time reading people's stories and blogs on their training and what was happening with their families. It was really helpful and made me think that maybe I could do that too.
I continued on with a 10k training program on my iPhone, and signed up for an 8k in September during a visit to my parents. My father's Alzheimer's was progressing, and he went into assisted living while I was there. I still showed up for the run tho, and my mom was there to cheer me on (and also pass out Kleenex to thankful runners when the port-a-potties ran out of tp, thanks mom!)
Then I a few 5ks and 10k and then signed up for series of winter trail runs, leading up to a half marathon marathon in the spring. The first trail run was on December 11, and the second was on January 15, 2011. I had a post New Year's trip to visit my parents planned in between these runs, and when I got off the plane, my mom met me and I found out my dad had suddenly taken a bad turn the day before and was really not doing well at all. He passed away on January 5.
I think I came back home on January 14 and drank a lot of wine, and then got out of bed and hitched a ride out to the trail run. I was seriously a winner just for showing up for this one, but I have to say that running in the snow (or trying to) through the woods is pretty comforting. I think my dad would have appreciated it.
I kept running, but I also signed up for the Five Boro Bike Tour in the spring and rode on the Alzheimer's Association team. It was great experience and I was really grateful when I found out that I could be on the team to run the New York City marathon.
While I have been thinking about this run since last year, it really just dawned on me how far that is in the last week and that I need to really try a little bit harder to keep going. I am pretty sure I can do it, and I appreciate the opportunity to try, that's for sure.
I wish I could fit into this essay all the great stuff my dad did and was, but I would really need many, many, many more pages. I do want to say that one thing people kept asking me over the last few years, was "does he know who you are?" and I really don't know. I knew who he was though, and I think that's what mattered. I miss him!
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