Losing Grandma, One Memory at a Time

By Joanna Schaffhausen, ABC Medical Unit

I got married this year, an event my grandmother had been praying for since I turned 16. Thrilled it was here at last, she dressed in her smart purple suit and attended the ceremony.

At the reception, I went to greet her. “Look at you all dolled up,” Grammy exclaimed as she stroked my big, white dress. “What’s the occasion?”

“I got married,” I replied.

“You did?” she asked, sounding hurt. “How come I wasn’t invited?”

In my family, we have to laugh or else we’d cry. These surreal conversations have been happening more and more over the last eight years as my grandmother slowly loses her memory.

What baffles the family is why fate seems to have chosen Grammy for this long, cruel goodbye. At nearly 88 years old, she is in otherwise reasonably good health. Her siblings survived to ripe old age without any serious memory problems. Her sister and roommate Kathryn, who is closing in now on 103, is still much sharper mentally.

Why should dementia grab my grandmother and not the others? We search the family history for clues.

Kathryn was — and still is — more mentally active than my grandmother. She read novels; my grandmother preferred People magazine. Kathryn acted in plays, painted pictures and was the belle of the ball at her senior center in Alaska. My grandmother spent most of her nights with my grandfather watching television in their living room.

Could Kathryn have helped dodge dementia by staying mentally fit?  Some brain experts think so.

Neurologist Gary Small at UCLA is a firm believer in the “use it or lose it” philosophy of brain health. Indeed, studies consistently show that people who are more mentally active — through social visits with friends, hobbies and daily brain games such as a crossword puzzle — have less cognitive decline over time.

Small’s latest research suggests that even simple Internet searches may help keep our brains active and healthy in old age.

In the study, brain scans showed that when middle-age and senior adults performed Internet searches, it activated many different areas of the brain, including those involved in memory, decision-making and reasoning. But the activation patterns only occurred in the brains of seniors who were used to surfing the Net. When researchers tested “Net naive” subjects, their brains showed an activation pattern similar to the one seen when people are reading.

Maybe, I think, if we had just been able to convince my grandmother to use the computer we gave her years ago, she might not be disappearing into a mental fog.

Concern about how to avoid dementia is on the rise as the population ages. Companies now market brain games designed to keep us mentally fit. Neurologists are divided on whether these mental workouts actually help, because so far no study has been able to establish firm proof that brain teasers and a heavy social calendar will keep dementia at bay. The research is suggestive but not conclusive.

Scientists are still looking for answers. Both my grandmother and Kathryn are taking part in a national longevity study in which researchers probe volunteers’ family history and study their DNA to search for clues about how they have lived so well for so long.

Kathryn hated the blood test (she has difficult veins), but she’s eager to be part of scientific history. “I like to be in on things,” she said, a life motto that may well help explain her advanced years.

As for my grandmother, she’s not sure why anyone would want to study her. “I’m not very old,” she insists.

“Grammy, you’re nearly 88,” I tell her often.

She’s always horrified. “Nonsense!” she says. “I’m not a day over 70.”

And again, we laugh through the tears.