A New Chapter

I can’t tell you how happy I am to be finally sitting down to write my next post! 2020 derailed me, as I know it did for many people. I started the year with so many goals and grand plans, and as always, God had a good laugh at me before intervening and taking me in another direction. I won’t bore you all by recapping last year. You can read my last three posts to get the scoop on that. Now, looking back on that long and winding road, I know God was steering me back to focusing on Alzheimer’s prevention.

After writing last, I spent the remainder of 2020 trying to go a bit easier on myself and continuing to work on my seemingly never-ending gut-health issues while desperately searching for another job. The newspaper industry was struggling enough as it was, but COVID pushed it to the brink. COVID also had put the kibosh on my initial plans to transition into freelance/contract writing, and during the interim, I realized that career path was not a good fit for me. So back to the drawing board I went. At first I applied for countless jobs similar to freelance: copywriting and editing work in marketing and advertising firms. But everything came to nothing. Clearly something had to change in my search.

I knew I had to try an entirely new path. On a gut feeling, I searched instead for secretary/office work. That first day I found a secretary position for a very successful business with an office just 10 minutes from my house. I read the job description and the further I got, the more excited I became; it was perfect for me. I applied, and by the start of the new year, I was in the middle of a very promising interview process. And then COVID hit home.

Sidelined by COVID

My third and final interview was scheduled for the last week of January 一 a Tuesday. The Friday before, however, the symptoms hit me like a ton of bricks. By the end of the day on that Friday, I was quite sick, sick in a way that a cold or the flu had never affected me. I knew it had to be COVID. Turns out I had caught the bug at work. Despite our efforts to be safe 一 sanitizing workspaces, taking our temperatures every day, social distancing, wearing masks 一 eight out of 11 of us got sick at roughly the same time, including my editor. This left only three brave souls to limp along, putting a paper together on their own for roughly two weeks.

My symptoms were insane, beginning with intense joint and body aches followed by a string of ailments that changed every day: high fever; extreme fatigue; diarrhea; partial and thankfully very temporary loss of sense of smell; sinus pain, pressure and a pounding headache; and bad sore throat with the white patches commonly found with strep. The tight cough and difficulty breathing came in the last day or two but luckily was never very bad. The chest congestion lingered for several weeks after, but I only truly felt sick that first week.

Far worse than any symptom I suffered was having to call my prospective boss to say I needed to reschedule the interview. I knew he was eager to get the position filled after going months without a secretary, and I was worried he would opt to hire someone else as a result of my delay. He was very kind and understanding, however, and we rescheduled for the following week. My final day of isolation was Monday, Feb. 1 and I went back to work on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I had my interview in the morning, was offered the job, accepted and then went into work at the newspaper and put in my notice. 2021 was off to one heck of a start.

Alzheimer’s Reminder

So how did all of this bring Alzheimer’s back to the forefront? My new job opened my eyes to just how much my brain had been on autopilot at the newspaper, and it was not happy about being woken up and forced to work. I never expected to struggle as much as I did. Obviously when starting a new job people are usually bombarded with a lot of new information, and no one would remember everything right off the bat. But I really struggled to remember anything and needed reminders and things spelled out for me. When my boss gave me a task that involved more than two steps, he would lose me. I quickly learned to keep a notebook handy to write down everything he said and then would read it back to him to make sure I had it right. (I almost always didn’t.) It was quite frustrating for both of us, but I think he appreciated my effort and determination to get it right.

I’m mostly settled now and everyday tasks are being committed to long-term memory, so the struggle has eased a great deal. My boss allowed me to purchase a day planner, in which I write every major task I do in a day with details about it for easy reference. Several times at the beginning I had been asked to retrieve something I’d worked on a few days prior for additional edits and would just stare blankly back, having no idea which project he was talking about. Now with my day planner I can quickly find previous projects and refresh my memory and spare my boss the annoyance of spelling it out again.

This wakeup call brought Dr. Dale Bredesen’s ReCODE protocol back to the front of my consciousness. I had not stopped following it in everyday life, but life pushed it to the back burner for a while (which is why my posts have been so few and far between). My work struggles sharply reminded me that due to my ApoE4 Alzheimer’s gene, I must every day aggressively follow this protocol to stave off cognitive decline.

The timing of this wake-up call just happened to come on the heels of my receiving Bredesen’s new book, “The End of Alzheimer’s Program,” a followup to his “The End of Alzheimer’s,” which first introduces the ReCODE protocol and explains the science behind it. His latest book spends more time on the program and less time on the science, breaking down ReCODE and spelling it out in more detail for easier following. I just finished reading it and no doubt will have more to say on it in the future. It has been a tremendous help in reminding me just how far I’ve come over the last six years, and that I am very healthy, but that I also still have a long way to go. I just need to remember not to be so hard on myself and to delve just a little deeper into ReCODE to stay on top of things and all will be well.