Living with Alzheimer's, ex-Sen. Proxmire is cut off from his storied past

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ^ | January 26, 2003 | Katherine M. Skiba

[Mr. Morals]

This is a heart-breaking story about former Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire (1957-1989). :-(...

[Old Sarge]

Heart-breaking isn't the word.

Sometimes, I wonder just how much we do with research. Where does it all go?

[Captain Kirk]

Second to Ron Paul, he was my favorite member of Congress. Very sad.

[cricket]

Sad. Very sad. Do hope research soon finds a way to end this hideous disease.

[You Dirty Rats]

Heart-breaking all right. I am going to visit my father in Miami next weekend. He can't recognize anyone, and is only 74.

There may be a worse disease out there, but I haven't experienced it in my family.

[RonF]

Some research money is basic; it goes into uncovering the basic questions of how things work, without any immediate apparent application to a particular problem. Some research money is more applied; it is aimed at exploring a particular problem. Of course, nothing is actually as cut and dried as this. But in this case, as in many others, the people who are working more towards the applied end still are working with incomplete knowledge of the basic end. Usually, someone uncovers something at the basic end that gains the attention of someone who's more oriented towards application.

Your question taken to an extreme (that you didn't take it to, I hasten to add) is like those who figure that AIDS is a government plot, because if it wasn't all the money that's been spent on it by now would have come up with a cure. These things take their own time. I spent a significant part of my life in biochemistry research labs, and I can tell you that the people there are very smart, not all that well paid, and very dedicated to what they're doing.

[pogo101]

Always did like the Golden Fleece awards (although it must be pointed out that Proxmire was hypocritical in his support of dairy price supports and subsidies). I am sorry to hear of his, or anyone's, being ill with this ailment.

[Mr. Jeeves]

I think paranoid-delusional disorders are even worse. My mother believed for most of her life that everyone was spying on her and out to get her, and she was abusive toward everyone who tried to explain otherwise. She drove away every friend and relative she had (except me - I was probably just too stupid to give up on her). Though there are medications to treat such conditions, just try getting a paranoid to take one. As long as she was able to fool the doctor into thinking she was rational (which she was, about half the time) then nothing could be done.

Eventually, her paranoia did her in - she didn't follow her doctor's instructions to deal with her congestive heart failure, and died last year at 70. It sounds cruel to say it was a relief to everyone in the family...but it was.

[Paladin2b]

"heart-breaking"? Perhaps to Proxmire's family; my heart goes out to them.

However, I think we would all do well to remember just what Senator Proxmire's public career was like with respect to scientific research. Yep, he was a big enemy of funding R&D, with his stupid "Golden Fleece" awards that never seemed to be awarded to crummy social welfare boondoggles, but always to some group of scientists on a federal grant that were guilty of thinking outside the box, pursuing research in some way that Proxmire didn't or couldn't understand. NASA alone has never recovered from his career.

And so he now sits in a fog of unknowing blankness. Who's to say that we might not have made some huge advances in understanding Alzheimer's decades ago from some research he helped s***-can? If we might have, then his fate might not be poetic justice, but it is still ironic.

[Old Sarge]

VERY informative! Thank You!

[davisfh]

"She drove away every friend and relative she had (except me - I was probably just too stupid to give up on her)"

Never confuse the words "stupid" with "faithful" (and loving as well.) You did good Mr. Jeeves.

[ladyinred]

So very very sad, but at least he is at peace, and happy as a 3 year old. It is the family that is suffering, because the person who you loved isn't really there anymore.

[ladyinred]

Sometimes, I wonder just how much we do with research. Where does it all go?

Actually, research is coming along. There are drugs now that if taken in the very beginning of the disease can slow down or retard the effects of Alzheimer's. Also taking a motrin type product is being shown to help. They are making progress thank God.

[JoeSixPack1]

Cry me a river! I never expected to reveal this on FR..BUT!....

I'm a full time caregiver to an Alzheimer infected Mom.

I singlehandedly take care of her. I have no government help, monitarily or otherwise. I gave up my life in '96 when her disease almost destroyed her. She's 81 now. I never married.

I don't have $3 to $7 thousand a month for nursing homes or nursing care. I pay for everything out of my personal life savings which is almost at an end. Nurses cost $18 to $22 an hour. Her requirements are luckily minimal but her disease is in the final stages.

For me to walk out my front door costs me an avg of $20 bucks an hour for nurses. I have no family help. I shop once a week and pay all my bills online.

Medicare has no provisions for alzheimers. Medicaid does, but requires signing over her estate to the government if her retirement income does not cover the expenses, so inotherwords useless.

I'm pretty fed up with hearing all these sob stories from ex Senators or Hollywood big wigs or even our cherished President Reagan's family that have "other people" care for their familie's alzheimers patient and look for sympathy.

Try doing this sometime in your life and get back to me with the tears.

Lastly, my passion for my Harley is still strong and sneaking out at 1am (hoping she doesn't wake) for an hour and a half ride is my only escape.

Looking forward there is only a funeral and my own old age.

[JoeSixPack1]

Platlets attach themselves to the brainstem neutralizing the electrical impulses to the brain. These platlets form under a gelatinous shieled between the brainstem and the skull cap.

There is no known drugs that can enter the gelatinous tissue to eradicate the platlets.

[billhilly]

God bless you and your father. My mother suffered from that hideous disease for the last ten years of her life.

[Calvin Locke]

NASA alone has never recovered from his career.

I remember a quote that "NASA neglected to figure out a way to run the rockets on either milk or cheese" with regard to Sen. Proxmire.

Don't forget about all the farm subsidies that never got the golden fleece either.

Great observation about starving R&D. It is very poetic. And just. He practiced short term politics, rather than long term common sense and planning.

Wasn't he one of the first to have hair transplants? I wonder how grants for that suffered under his reign.

I'll have a emphathetic thought for his family.

[StACase]

I think everyone in Wisconsin met this man at least once. I know that I shook his hand in front of the flower building at the Wisconsin State Fair several different years.

He's the only Democrat I ever voted for. All though the last time he ran I pulled the "R" lever for the first time, and have been doing so ever since.

[lonestar]

My 87 year old mother is sitting behind me right now, talking to her brother who has been dead three years. She started having symptoms about 9 years ago.

We activated the alarm system to beep when a door is opened about 4 years ago. She doesn't try to leave anymore. She would sneak out and sit in the car.

She is happy. Doesn't have a care in the world. Doesn't remember her husband of 50 years--which seems to be what triggered it.

We take it one day at a time. I have help during the day but it is confining at night because nobody wants to work for an hour or two.

[aristeides]

Proxmire appears in the third volume of Caro's life of LBJ, as a Democratic senator with the guts to defy Johnson.

By the way, smoking prevents Alzheimer's. Depending on how you look at it, it either cuts the incidence in half, or postpones the onset by five years.