Do You Know Where Your Grandma is Tonight?

The wheelchairs go first. Then, the walkers fall in line. Next, the canes fill in the parade. Ambulatory patients proceed last. This is my elderly relative's report from her assisted living facility. Meals mean assembling with everyone else to follow directions and receive a plate.

She doesn't know what she's doing there.

She doesn't understand why they took away her checkbook.

She doesn't believe she needs medication or supervision to perform the simplest tasks.

Her diagnosis is Alzheimer's. With this indictment, her fate immediately became group living: The doctors decided this Alzheimer's patient couldn't be trusted with the house she cleaned. An Alzheimer's patient didn't need information because she couldn't understand it anyway, they said. So, an Alzheimer's patient doesn't receive information, and, of course, the correct date may escape her-patient as she chronically is.

Catch 22 must have been invented for the elderly in America. If women like my ancestor were seventeen-or even twenty-five-their emergency room would be a learning center. Their deficiencies in understanding math would be considered almost normal. Their relatives might even shake their prejudiced heads and sigh: "Well, women aren't any good at numbers anyway. It might have been different if she'd been born a man."

Instead, they are mighty quick to conclude: "Well, she's past seventy. What did you expect?"

I know what this elderly lady expected. She thought people respected senior citizens because she did. She thought police investigated family disputes. She was absolutely certain that her sister was a genius with figures. She counted on her siblings to look after her because she had deferred to them all her life. These are just a few of the "fixed ideas" that got her indicted for Alzheimer's, dementia, and serious disorientation to modern life.

So, would you like to explain the facts to this relative of mine?

If she WERE seventeen, she would have the right to be as deluded as she pleased. She could go around half naked, and compete with movie stars for fashion reprimands from Mr. Blackwell. She could obsess over celebrities, instead of her siblings, and people would think nothing of it. She could cry over her dead dog, and doctors might well say: "She's young. She'll get over it."

They might also call her "depressed" and add: "That's fairly common for teenagers, too."

But this relative of mine has no right to depression, math phobia, delusions, fixed ideas, disorientation, fantasies, the vote, her own money, her house, her banker's explanations, her cleaning equipment, her preferred diet, her medical records, her lawyer's bills, the sales contract for her house, or even her knitting. She's eighty-nine.