Still pertinent to caregiving, a different kind of post today:
Our Dancing vs. Wrestling Moves
Ron Louie
It looks like a “staggered stance lift,” if a referee were
to score us, although I’m trying my best to be gentle,
picking her up from a deep chair, her eyes half-closed.
Maybe the scorekeeper thinks I’ve asked her to dance.
After all, we have music playing, and as the lift proceeds,
I’m counting out loud, “one and two and three and…”
Her legs don’t quite buckle, and I can feel that she’s trying.
She used to smile, like a reflex, when she could dance,
sometimes swaying just by herself, some inner music
to which I never had access, so it’s not that different now.
Maybe she is smiling; I just can’t see because I’m holding her
up too close, my arms flexed like biceps curls, under her arms.
It’s sometimes wet where her face rests against my shirt.
I don’t look down to see if she’s moving her feet, but
at least they’re not obviously dragging. I’m concentrating,
over-thinking my own balance, trying to prevent a fall.
A sense of syncopation pertains, as we cut across the carpet
to the couch, prepared with three pads, the top one wet-proof,
and three pillows. The move is to turn her, then lay her down.
Maybe the official thinks we are finally on to wrestling.
Ancient wrestlers were legendary: the Bible had Jacob,
wrestling his Angel all night, while Heracles grappled Death.
Greek goddess Palaistra championed the art and the skill.
We are not now being Biblical, or Olympic, or even competing,
but the quotidian sequences, the maneuvers, and the holds
all get the intimate job done; we clinch the end of the round.
Maybe the timekeeper neglects the bell, so the music plays on.
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Is Alzheimer Dementia best described as going backwards in cognition?
FAST-Meguro-et-al-2020, https://doi.org10.1111psyg.12478
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Retrogenesis: an ironic notion of decline
Ron Louie
Reading the term “retrogenesis” caused me an unthinking spasm,
an oscillatory movement, twisting my head from side to side;
how dare those doctors brain us by combining opposing concepts,
heading back while starting anew, make up your minds people!
Maybe neuroscientists’ minds are really made to think that way,
starting new disease notions from something preconceived,
creating from a history, ruminating backward before an astonishing
action forward, like chomping off that first bite of the apple.
The Bard sets the stage here with his memorable description
of our “second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything,”
inevitable verses that avoid venturing an explicit oxymoron.
Retrogenesis, their portmanteau for the progressive loss of abilities,
suggests that dementia’s devastation can be best seen in the rearview mirror,
reflecting childhood’s developmental delight, driven while stuck in reverse,
without mentioning the distressing lack of joy or accomplishment.
Maybe -genesis is all right; while no patient claims childlike innocence,
it hints at biblical ordeals to come. The ambiguous link to genetics
insinuates the awakening of a tyrannical DNA, dictating to transcriptionists
all its schemes and machinations, in a private undeciphered code.
Prefixed with retro-, the authors predict regressive steps down a previous pathway, nearly ignoring the vanishing of an identity wandering away, suffering that secretly begins in silence, the dogmas of causality that compound confusion, even as those on their final trajectory struggle for a cogent theory of how and why.
Were writers evoking an ironic contrast to that salient retrospection in Genesis,
when Lot’s wife, commanded to “look not behind” toward Sodom, did so anyway? A cognitive choice, maybe a misjudgment, leaving her stark and crystalline, perhaps precipitated by salt in her own tears, or by a mistaken glint in her eyes.
[“Retrogenesis” is the term used by Dr. B. Reisberg’s group to describe the increasing caregiving needs of dementia patients as their condition worsens. Their theory is that the developmental progress one sees in children through adulthood seems to slide backwards.
The poem was accepted by an academic medical journal recently. The reviewers and editorial staff made the poem much better; CareGivingOldGuy is grateful for their efforts.
CareGivingOldGuy did balk at signing over the copyright in perpetuity, which seemed a bit long for a poem they were getting free and no one would pay for anyway! So here ya go. ]
Both poems are hereby copyrighted with this online public posting. Thanks for enduring it all!
