ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, Apr. 22 2010

Alzheimer's kills memories, not emotions
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

When I was 4, my father drove my older brother and me to Yellowstone National
Park. We saw Old Faithful, rode horses and got outfitted head-to-toe in Western
wear. I've seen the photos and heard the stories — especially the one about how
I convinced Dad to buy me the store's last pair of non-refundable, red-leather
cowboy boots, only to confess the next morning that they did not fit.

I still have those boots somewhere in a cobweb-covered box in my basement,
along with a snapshot of Dad hugging my brother and me as the three of us
squinted in the Wyoming sun. Aside from those mementos and a vague impression
that we had fun, I have no memory of the trip.

It's a shame, considering the trouble my father took to get us there. But Dad
never seemed to mind such things. He loved to show us new places, but mostly,
he just loved us. And as long as his wife and children got that message, Dad
did not much care if we remembered the details.

I thought about Dad last week, when I read about a new University of Iowa study
that found patients with Alzheimer's-type memory loss can remember the
emotional imprint of an experience even after they have forgotten the event
itself. The study, led by neuropsychology doctoral student Justin Feinstein and
published in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, was conducted on patients with damage to their hippocampus, who
suffer from the same type of amnesia that signals the onset of Alzheimer's
disease.

Researchers showed the patients happy and sad film clips and then gave them
memory tests. The patients could recall few details about what they had just
seen, yet the feelings of joy or sorrow associated with the film lingered well
beyond their memories of the film itself. The study suggests that even if a
demented person cannot remember that you paid him a visit or engaged him in a
pleasant conversation, he still can benefit from the good feelings wrought by
your good deed.

It's a lesson that hits close to home. I watched my father battle Alzheimer's
disease for 15 years, before it finally took his life in 2008. One of the
hardest things about those years — especially for my mother, his faithful and
exhausted caregiver — was hearing well-intentioned people dismiss the need for
her solicitous care or their own failure to visit him by saying that "he
doesn't remember anything anyway."

Like millions of Americans living with Alzheimer's disease, Dad's failure to
recollect names, dates and faces left him vulnerable to social isolation and to
neglect from overworked aides in the nursing home where my mother had to move
him in his final years.

A few of those aides treated Dad with the same tender, loving care you would
show a baby who could not communicate his needs. Too many others shouted orders
at him, apparently mistaking his dementia for deafness. Some barely talked to
him at all, assuming — as I heard one mutter while leaving his room — that
creating a pleasant environment for Dad "doesn't matter because he doesn't know
where he is anyway."

Dad's memory may have been ravaged in those last years, but his emotional
acuity was keener than ever. Like an infant reacting to stresses in his
surroundings, Dad's mood was mightily affected by the tone of voice and
gentleness or harshness of another's touch. I could always tell when he had
just had a visit — usually from my mom — because I would find him singing and
smiling in his chair, peaceful and jolly amid the dreary ordinariness of
nursing home life. I suspected my own visits had a similar effect, even though
Dad often forgot them as soon as I left.

Alzheimer's is a devastating disease not only because of the confusion it sows
in its victims, but also the sense of futility it breeds in their caregivers,
who are tempted to despair that anything they do makes a difference. How nice
that science finally has documented something devoted caregivers have known all
along: Love is a gift never wasted, even if the one who receives forgets to say
thanks.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential
speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN. Her
website is www.colleen-campbell.com.