Daughter: Reagan no longer able to communicate

CNN ^ | Friday, December 5, 2003

[F14 Pilot]

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Ronald Reagan's daughter Patti Davis wants people to have a clear understanding of what Alzheimer's disease has done to the 92-year-old former president.

Davis wrote in an essay for the Dec. 15 edition of People magazine that she is often asked how her father is doing and whether he recognizes her.

[F14 Pilot]

Former President Reagan in a 1990 photo.

[Cacophonous]

God bless him, I hope he goes peacefully.

[F14 Pilot]

Republicans' Ping!

[Maelstrom]

God Bless Ronald Reagan.

Nancy, please do yourself a favor and do not invite your daughter back until he is at rest.

[Huck]

Poor Nancy.

[reagan_fanatic]

I hope the good folks at CBS and Showtime sleep well tonite.

[Fierce Allegiance]

[Behind Liberal Lines]

For once, I'm sort of with Patti on this one. Let people know how sick he is, so (a) we can send this great man our thougts and prayers; and (b) people realize just how craven and low CBS/Viacom/Showtime were in attacking him at this time.

[TPartyType]

The Great Communicator is silenced . . . (sigh)

Speeches by the Great Communicator

[Valin]

It might surprise you but they have reconciled.

[commish]

As much as it pains me to say this, and as much as the tears will flow on the day he passes -- I do pray that the good lord ends this great mans suffering soon.

Prayers to Nancy and the entire Reagan family, as they work through this horrible disease.

[Valin]

From People
http://people.aol.com/people/magazine/coverstoryexcerpt/0,11369,553367,00.html

The Long Goodbye


Once, they seemed invincible. Now former president Ronald Reagan is gravely ill with Alzheimer's, and Nancy has rebuilt her life to care for him, hands-on, every day.


At the Ronald Reagan home on a hill overlooking Los Angeles, the Christmas decorations will soon be going up. As usual there will be a tree that his wife, Nancy, will half-smother with ornaments, including little white porcelain angels each inscribed with the name of a member of the family. As she has done for nearly a half-century, Nancy will unpack foil-and-paper Christmas trees that the couple's children Patti Davis, 51, and Ron Jr., 45, made when they were in grade school. "Mrs. Reagan goes out of her way to give the president the traditional Christmas they've always had," says Fred Ryan, a former assistant to the president. "She wants him to share in the joy of the season."
Sadly, Ronald Reagan will likely understand little of what's going on around him. At 92, the former president is in the last stages of Alzheimer's, the devastating disease from which he has suffered for nearly a decade. The once-robust leader of the free world can no longer speak, feed himself or even recognize his wife. Confined to a hospital bed, or occasionally placed in a wheelchair, he spends his days in a small room, where — on orders from a wife ferociously intent on guarding his dignity — even his closest friends have been forbidden to visit. it has been several years since an outsider has been allowed to see him. According to his oldest son, Michael, 58, who remembers the days when actor James Cagney would stop by the house at precisely 4 p.m. every Christmas Day, "We haven't been getting together (during the holidays) as a family lately, only because of Dad. He doesn't know it's Christmas."

For Ronald Reagan each day is the same. "He's in the throes of continual neurological degradation," explains his former White House doctor John Hutton. "Occasionally he is put in a wheelchair and moved out where he can view the city, but there is a vacantness there. You can't really tell if he appreciates it." If it weren't for his remarkably rugged constitution, says Hutton, Reagan would probably be gone already.

While the former president's condition may come as a shock to admirers, for his wife, Nancy, it has become the focus of her life. According to friends, in recent years she has only rarely left her husband's side, especially since Ronald underwent hip surgery in 2001. With the help of doctors, nurses and a full-time housekeeping staff, Nancy, 82, spends nearly every day overseeing her husband's care — part of an increasingly lonely vigil that she calls "the long goodbye." "Nancy is no different from so many people who are impacted by this disease," says Dennis Revell, husband of the late Maureen Reagan, Ronald's daughter with his first wife, Jane Wyman. (Maureen died of melanoma in 2001.) "She may be in one part of the house at one moment, but she never leaves his side in reality."
Her efforts have come at a cost. Nancy had cataract surgery earlier this year, and the former First Lady's health is said to be more fragile, the emotional toll on her life increasingly visible. "When the chips are down, she shows the kind of strength and grace we could all only hope to have," says former aide Sheila Tate. "But this has been nine years now. She lives with it every day. She doesn't complain, but she's sad. You can hear it in her voice." Adds Michael Deaver, a White House deputy chief of staff and another close friend who had worked with her husband since his days as California governor: "She had a great laugh. You don't hear it much now."

Indeed, for Nancy, who flatly refuses to discuss the details of her husband's condition, the couple's three-bedroom house behind high gates in the hillside enclave of Bel Air has become something of a fortress, guarded by a Secret Service detail that has been in place since the Reagans returned to California from Washington in 1989. Aside from lunching with a tight circle of friends at the Hotel Bel-Air, where she invariably dines on cobb salad and chocolate-chip cookies, Mrs. Reagan limits her outside appearances to events related to her husband's legacy, such as a Nov. 14 party marking the renovation of galleries at the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley, Calif. (She took no questions from reporters.) In any case the respite is brief. "You can imagine how hard it is for her to make conversation at lunch or dinner, knowing what awaits her at home," says pal Pat Buckley, wife of conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr. As for Nancy's famous taste for society outings and lavish entertaining, says etiquette writer and Washington friend Letitia Baldrige, "she loved clothes and fashion, but you have to have somewhere to wear them to. Now that's gone."

Yet friends of the couple take comfort in the fact that Ronald's illness has to a certain degree reunited their once-fractured family. Daughter Patti Davis, who wrote a bitter and thinly disguised fictional account of her family before reconciling with her mother two years ago, is now a regular visitor to the house. A key turning point, many have said, was the death of Maureen, who had helped with the president's care. "Fortunately, Nancy had Patti, who saw the void," says Revell.
Similarly, Ronald Reagan Jr., now a Seattle TV journalist, has grown much closer to his mother, and Michael Reagan describes how he, too, made his peace. "I decided in 1991 to tell my dad for the first time that I loved him," he told PEOPLE. "He actually said back to me, 'I love you too.' " Michael then made a habit of hugging his father each time he saw him. As Ronald's mind faded, he eventually seemed to forget who Michael was but seemed to recognize him as the man who hugged him.

"One day," continues Michael, "my wife and I were leaving the house, and she looked at me and said, 'Michael, you've forgotten something.' I turned around and there was my dad standing in the door with his arms wide open. I had forgotten to hug him goodbye."

After CBS announced in June that it would air The Reagans, a controversial and unflattering TV movie about the First Couple, friends rallied to Nancy's side. "She said to me, 'I really don't need this,' " says former White House aide Deaver, who insists that Nancy played no direct role in pressuring CBS executives to drop the program. Patti Davis says her mother did indeed write to the network to complain. (CBS eventually moved the movie to their sister network, Showtime, where it aired on Nov. 30.) In any case, Merv Griffin says his friend was overwhelmed by public support, especially when she was stopped by well-wishers during a shopping trip in Beverly Hills. "She had lost sight of how loved Ronnie was," says Griffin.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[Maelstrom]

Did Nancy say it was OK to reveal the information?

Without her OK, I find it difficult to accept that this was something beneficial.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

I like to think that I can speak about MY father without MY mother's permission.

[Saundra Duffy]

My friend Chris Hansen told me the only difference between Ronald Reagan and Terri Schiavo is their spouse. One is a loving spouse and the other is a monster from hell. Since Reagan cannot communicate any longer, there's good enough excuse for the pro death forces to withhold food and water. Luckily Terri's parents are fighting for her life.

[chimera]

I was my mother's caregiver and legal guardian after she was stricken with Alzheimer's and I have to say that it was the most difficult, heartrending thing I have ever had to deal with. To see someone you've known and loved all your life, who has cared for you and raised you at great sacrifice to themselves, gradually fade away and knowing there is nothing you can do about it is the most helpless feeling you can experience.

But you take on the burden willingly out of love and loyalty to your loved one, and do the best you can to manage. Nancy Reagan deserves tremendous credit for taking on this often thankless task. While Mr. Reagan is likely unable to express his appreciation, I hope at least her children and step-children will find it within themselves to show their appreciation for her sacrifice and devotion.

So say a prayer for those stricken with this illness, and their loved ones, that they might find comfort and strength. And say a prayer of thanks for the health you and your loved ones still enjoy, because without it, life is just that much more difficult.

[oyez]

Thank G_d for Ronald Reagan. Where would we be today if wasn't for his work?

My father suffered as Ron did. I don't have the words or the command of language to describe those last months.

[Trueblackman]

It enrages me to see my President waste away like this, while that ahole Clinton walks around free and still screwing the world over. Why couldn't this happen to Clinton since I believe that he is the anti-christ myself. Reagan should be able to enjoy the fruits of his hard labor to secure a strong and blessed nation, but not like this.

[Maelstrom]

After our estrangement, I wouldn't want my brother to speak about any member of my family.

If he did, I'd ensure he had no contact with any of them.