He Will Always Love Us

He Will

Always

Love Us

Family’s True Story of

a Father and Husband’s Battle with Alzheimer’s

PATRICIA MICHAUD

He Will Always Love Us

Copyright © 2020 by Patricia Michaud. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of URLink Print and Media.

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Published in the United States of America

ISBN 978-1-64753-410-3 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64753-411-0 (Digital)

11.06.20

CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Let’s Start at the Beginning

Chapter 2: The Fun Begins in the Year 2001

Chapter 3: The Appointment and Diagnosis

Chapter 4: Becoming a Full-Time Caregiver

Chapter 5: Thank You, God

Chapter 6: Celebration of Life Party

Chapter 7: Joe Moves into a Care Facility

Chapter 8: Downward Spiral, April 2013

Chapter 9: Ross’s Diagnosis

Chapter 10: Thoughts on My Brothers by Tony Michaud

Chapter 11: What, Parkinson’s Too?

Chapter 12: How to Say Good-bye

Chapter 13: Who Am I Now? Who am I now?

Chapter 14: Eulogy to Joe By Tony Michaud

Chapter 15: Prayers and Poems That Comfort Me

Chapter 16: What Helped Me Out

Chapter 17: A Recap

To my beloved husband, who put up such a courageous fight for such a long time. Thank you for being the person you were. To Cortney my oldest daughter and my two grandsons Gage and JW, thank you for always being there with me, and helping me through all of this. You are all a god-sent. I would like to thank my family and friends for all their support. To Dr. Joseph Quinn, Joe’s doctor. To my counselor, Shirley Price, for all their help. To Mary Karr, who is my comrade in arms who went through the same things as I did.

We need to continue to fight and conquer this wretched disease, Alzheimer’s.

MY PARENTS

Your love is strong and was never meek

You said your vows, promise and keep

His heart was big, your love so true

Through thick and thin, you’ve made it through

All the bitter ends may seemhard to take

It’s your eternal love that will never break

I love you,

Cortney Turner

WHY I NEEDED TO WRITE THIS BOOK

This book is about my husband, Joe, and our daughter’s father, who was diagnosed first with mild cognitive impairment (the onset of Alzheimer’s) in 2003 at the age of fifty-six. Then by the age of sixty, he had full-blown Alzheimer’s. Joe has been in a study program since the first with Dr. Quinn at the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU).

This book is to help you with preparing, to give you knowledge about, and how to cope with what Alzheimer’s throws at you and your family.

Why I wrote this book is a big question. I didn’t know a thing about the disease. Hell, I didn’t know the name mild cognitive impairment, let alone the word Alzheimer’s. But let me tell you now, I may not be an expert, but I can sure help you out if you need any questions answered.

You need to know what life-changing experiences you will be going through. This book will tell you about all kinds of other books, seminars, and classes. But what those books don’t tell you are the things that go on in your home and in your life with your loved ones. That is what I wanted to do in this book, to give you a better insight of what goes on and how it changes you and your family.

First, there are signs to look for:

Having them always say that you didn’t tell them something and then getting mad at you because of it.

Written or verbally understanding.

Repeating themselves.

Difficulty completing tasks at home.

Having problems communicating with friends and family.

Getting upset with themselves because they cannot find things, and they just don’t understand.

Problems remembering names.

Misplacing items.

Getting lost.

Having problems at home.

Difficulty performing familiar tasks.

All this is nerve breaking and gut wrenching to see your loved one go through.

This disease is like no other disease you would know about. Cancer, leukemia, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease are all horrible diseases. But with Alzheimer’s, it will strip you of yourself, your knowledge of being any type of normal human being. I’ll tell you more as we go along.

In an article by the Oregonian, by Julie Sullivan and the Alzheimer’s Association, it states a report warns that Alzheimer’s will be the defining disease of the baby boomers, with one in eight eventually developing the progressive brain disorder. About ten million boomers can expect to develop the disease, and there is no prevention or cure as of today.

Right now, just in Oregon, where I live, there are about seventy thousand that have Alzheimer’s, and by the year 2030, there will be about seventy-six million people living with this dreadful disease called Alzheimer’s. Eventually, it will go higher because when all the baby boomers get to sixty-five or so. We do not understand what this life-changing disease can do to us.

If you become a caregiver or know someone who is a caregiver, God bless you and thank you for all your hard work. If you know someone who is taking care of someone with Alzheimer’s, get them the help they need, because it is a long, hard road to go by yourself.

I can definitely say that from experience. You think that you can go at it alone, and maybe you can at first, but it is so hard, physically and mentally draining. The longer you are into it, the harder it gets. You need to have your family and your core group around you.

CHAPTER

1

Let’s Start at the Beginning

Joe was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1947. He is the oldest of the three brothers, Ross is six years younger, and Tony is the baby of the family; he is nine years younger. When Joe was sixteen, his mom passed away from bone cancer. It was hard on the entire family, so Joe’s dad remarried shortly after to help bring up three boys.

At the age of eighteen, Joe joined the Navy as a radio man. With a knowledge of electronics and having been a part of the amateur radio FFC for four years prior, it helped secure his position in the service. He was stationed at Kodiak, Alaska, and then at Navcommsta, Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam.

In 1969, Joe had served his four years and was honorably discharged in 1972. At that time, I was living with my roommate, Carol. One Friday night, she and her boyfriend suggested that I go to a party with them. It was an after-hours party that started at 1:00 a.m. Who in their right mind would like to go to a party that starts at 1:00 a.m.? Considering that you have been up at 5:00 a.m. to go to work that day. But I did it for Carol’s sake because she had been telling me all the stories of this guy whom she had been skiing with named Joe, together with Jim, for the winter. And she kept telling me that she had the perfect guy for me, and boy, was she right.

Well, I did go after being scolded about not getting out a lot—though I was already seeing a person from work that no one new about—so I decided to go (what the heck), and look what happened. As I sat and people-watched, Joe started watching me and decided he should make the first move.

He came over and sat down beside me. My first thought was that I was not interested. But Carol said he was a great guy, so I gave him a chance.

So Joe and I started dating that next day. From that first date, we were inseparable. We also knew that we were going to be married within the first two weeks. He would always say to me, Life is no bed of roses. I knew he had to be sure.

It took him about ten months before he would ask me. Well, he truly didn’t really ask me to marry him. But he did show me the ring. I said it was about time, kissed him, and off I went to show all my neighbors, who loved him like I did; they always kept asking me, When is he going to propose to you?

Joe was one of those people that you or everyone could feel so comfortable being around and talking to. That your life history would jumped right out of you when you were talking to him without really thinking about it. He could make you feel so at ease and relaxed.

Because my mom always watched my back, as mothers tend to do, she was a little wary of Joe since our relationship was moving along somewhat quickly for a mother’s standards.

At that time, my parents were out of town when Joe and I met. It was going to be about three weeks before they got back into Portland, so I kept calling her to tell her everything that what was going on.

You have to remember, I had just turned twenty-one when I met Joe. I didn’t have a lot of dating experience at all.

Mom called me one night to say that when she got home, she would like to have a long talk with him, just to see what type of gentleman he was. I told him about my concerns with her. He looked at me and smiled and told me not to worry; he would be happy to talk to her.

I introduced them to each other, and off they went to the backyard to have the talk with Joe to learn of his future intentions. My mom said to me that night, Joe was either a damn good liar or a damn good salesman; she didn’t know which one yet. A belief she kept for years.

With Joe, what you see is what you get: a kind and loving person. After that, I thought my mom loved Joe more than she loved me sometimes.

One day, my roommate, Carol, told me she was going to be moving in with her boyfriend. I told Joe that I couldn’t afford to be on my own. Joe asked me if I got along with my parents. I said, Sure I do. So we suggested that I should move back home to save money, and within a few months, Joe moved into a little playhouse on my parents’ property. We knew we were going to be getting married the next year anyway.

September 21, 1973, was our wedding day. My father was a man who hardly ever showed much emotion, but he could not keep the smile from his face. I kept asking him, Are you just happy to get rid of me, or what? All I knew that day was my life had truly begun. And what a honeymoon we had planned. We traveled up to Canada then drove through it till we got to the top of Montana, and down we started heading for home. What a great honeymoon, two weeks of enjoyment. We started to make many plans, from buying a home, to having children, to what kind of traveling we would like to do, and what countries we would like to go see, all the backpacking and camping trips we were planning to do, even where our lives would take us in our old age. We couldn’t wait for some of our retirement venture that we wanted to do.

One year after we purchased our home, our first daughter, Cortney, was born. Then twenty-one months later, our youngest daughter, Morgan, was born. Both times, before the girls were born, Joe was working in management, and the company he worked for was having labor problems; in other words, the company employees were striking. Because he had the ability to work from home and not cross the picket lines, as he worked, he could watch television, and he heard the names and decided that those were the names of the girls. Cortney was an actress on a talk show, Morgan being a role of a female ranger. After discussing the first names, I came up with their middle names, Cortney Anne and Morgan Marie.

As a dad, Joe was playful yet stern. He believed in rules and responsibility and also that a church was the place for families every Sunday. He trusted his gut and would let me take the lead in raising the girls but would lay down the law when need