Mona Johnson

I'm a telecom industry analyst and writer searching for information about what caused my Dad's dementia.

The evening routine at my parents’ house was still the same. I heard ice cubes clinking as my father mixed martinis; piano music played on the stereo. Mom started dinner and Dad took his usual spot in front of the fire to read. Beau, their yellow lab mix, climbed up on Dad’s lap.

But my father’s Business Week and Boating magazines sat unread.

“What are you reading, Dad?”

“Take a look - there’s some good information in here.” He sorted through the papers by his chair and handed me a Berkeley Wellness Letter, two Mayo Clinic Health Letters, and a Harvard Health Letter.

“Huh. How come you’re reading these?”

“My memory isn’t so good now. You know I had my thing with the doctor last week and everything was okay, but I want to see if there’s something I can do to help my brain.”

“Huh.”

“You should write this stuff. You’re smart enough to talk with the doctors and scientists and write about it so people can understand. It’s really the same thing you do now.”

”I don’t know, Dad, maybe I should stick to writing about telecommunications.”

“Think about it – it would be just great. People really need help with this.”

“Huh.” I didn’t think about it for very long.

A lot of things changed at my parents’ house after that. Dad’s memory problems slid into “maybe Alzheimer’s, maybe a stroke, maybe something else” problems. Both my grandmothers had had dementia; now it had crept into the next generation.

My sister and I searched the Internet. My brother, a professor of library science, sent references. We struggled to piece together enough information to help Mom talk with the doctors. My father had been right, people really needed help with this.

Dad died of a hemorrhagic stroke on November 19, 2005. While we were going through his papers, I found some old health newsletters. Then I remembered what he said: “…talk with the doctors and scientists and write about it so people can understand.”