Photo by Adam Vogler
For Duane and Roxanne Desmarteau, his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease has meant changes in their lives, but not despair.
Three years after Alzheimer’s disease crept into Duane Desmarteau’s life, the 60-year-old continues to respond well to treatment.
“He’s still doing real well,” said his wife, Roxanne. “He’s been on medication for three years and we’re participating in a study at KU Medical Center.”
The study includes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET scans) and lumbar punctures to study the proteins in the brain, as well as memory tests every four months.
“Hopefully that will lead to early diagnosis in the future, like an early pregnancy test,” she said.
The early intervention and the medication that followed seemed to have slowed Alzheimer’s usual progressive deterioration to a snail’s pace.
Duane’s lapses of memory had been almost indiscernible to his wife, in part because her mother was ill and being moved to Emporia, and in part because some of his responses seemed to fall in the “typical husband” category.
“I didn’t notice a lot of things,” Roxanne said. “He would ask questions, like he hadn’t heard me tell him something, and that sometimes isn’t uncommon. ...
“‘How come you didn’t tell me we had to go here or there?’ ‘Well, I did.’ ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it.’ This has been going on for years,” she said, laughing because her husband didn’t always seem to hear her, anyway.
Co-workers, though, dealt with the business side of Duane Desmarteau and became concerned. Duane was a salesman at North Motors when he was diagnosed, and before that had coached soccer for years at Emporia High School.
“People noticed it in me before I did,” he said. “It’s not something that came all at once.”
“He would forget people who came in the afternoon, and they had been there in the morning,” Roxanne explained. “One time he went to get into the car on the lot and he got into the back seat instead of the front seat.”
The co-workers had known Duane as a “very passionate, intense coach” who used to be able to organize soccer tournaments and figure brackets in his head, Roxanne said.
“So, some of his co-workers intervened and called our son, who lives in Olathe, and told him they were concerned and didn’t know if he had had a stroke or, you know, something wasn’t quite right,” she said.
Dean Desmarteau then called her, and she took Duane to the doctor the next day. Perhaps the problem stemmed from kidney failure, high blood pressure, tumors, sleep disorders and an assortment of other possibilities, the doctors thought. Through a process of elimination, Duane was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
“You kind of go into a state of denial: this couldn’t possibly be,” Roxanne said.
Duane said that after being diagnosed, he “just didn’t know what to think about it.” After a time, he adjusted and accepted, and the disease seems not to have made further inroads into the family’s life.
“I think some of the time the symptoms come on much earlier than we recognize,” she said. “... I think sometimes the sooner you start with the drugs, maybe it does slow it down more, and I think there’s some new drugs on the horizon that they may be close to testing. We’d like to be part of that if they do.”
Duane has coped well and, perhaps because of early diagnosis and the combination of taking Aricept and Namenda, he has maintained his ability to take care of himself and others, though he no longer works.
Much of the time, Duane said, he cannot notice much difference in himself before and after the diagnosis.
“I’m not able to drive to places that I used to by memory, but if I’m familiar with it, I don’t have any problem driving the car,” he said.
“He still takes care of the yard and he still does some cooking at home and some cleaning, and we both have a passion for rescue animals and so we have a cat and five dogs and we do some fostering for the Buck Fund,” she said.
“We call those his therapy dogs because they’re his companions. He has to walk them every day, which is good physically and mentally, and they just bring us a lot of joy and love.”
The exercise is an important part of Duane’s regimen of keeping in shape and staying on top of the Alzheimer’s.
“I keep myself busy, even though I’m not working any more,” he said. “I like to play golf, so that keeps me going, too.”
The boys learned to enjoy soccer and golf by osmosis. One is a college soccer coach and both play golf at every opportunity.
“They kind of followed me around that they got a hunger for it,” he said. “So far, crossin’ my fingers, I’m able to do about everything that I was before.”
Memory tests are part of the regime in the test group at KU Medical Center, and Duane exercises his mind at home to maintain his memory.
“I have a computer and I do puzzles and things on the computer and different things to keep my mind sharp,” he said. “I like to play poker, so I can get on the Internet and I can play poker on the Internet.”
Family also has been a boon.
“One thing that has always helped is our family, our kids,” he said. “We’re always getting together and that helps me, too.”
Duane has two boys, Doug and Dean; Roxanne is mother to Daniel, Cyrus, and Wendy Logan.
He takes Roxanne’s 90-year-old mother to doctor’s appointments, goes to the bank and helps out with the house.
“You have to deal with what comes along,” he said. “If you just think about it all the time, you’re not going to have too much quality.”
He had a little advice for others who are dealing, or may need to deal, with Alzheimer’s.
“Don’t lose track of what you want to do,” he said. “You’re just like anybody else. You just have a little bit of problem every once in a while.”
Duane’s naturally upbeat personality has remained intact, Roxanne said, though many Alzheimer’s patients undergo drastic personality changes.
“He’s still very pleasant, very agreeable. He’s always been very positive and upbeat,” Roxanne said. “There’s a lot of things that we enjoy, like we have grandchildren that we thoroughly enjoy. They come visit us. We have a lot of support and love from our church.
“We just stay focused on the things that we enjoy doing together, and life is good.”
It’s an attitude that Duane shares.
“The thing about it is, if you dwell in what’s happening to you, then you’re going to miss out on what you could have had,” he said.
Alzheimer’s Week
The city commission has declared Oct. 5 through 11 as Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Week.
The local Alzheimer’s chapter will hold a memory walk to raise funds on Oct. 5 at the Lyon County Fairgrounds. Registration will begin at 1:30 p.m., with the two-mile walk at 2 p.m.
For information or to register, call Patti Lipson, 794-4148, or e-mail pattilipson@sbcglobal.net.
The goal for the walk is $25,000.
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