The Poplar Bluff Walk to End Alzheimer’s Saturday will be special this year for retired teacher Brenda Allen. Each step she takes will be in honor of her late mother Earline Robertson. The event will begin at 10 a.m. at Poplar Bluff High School, 3209 Oak Grove Road.
This will be the first time Allen and her team Friends of Earlene will attend.
The aim of walk organizers is to raise more than $25,000 for Alzheimer’s research and support, and they are already close to 20% of that goal, with 10 teams and 35 people already registered.
“My mom worked for 40 years or so for City Light and Water,” Allen said. “She did billing and payroll and insurance claims. She was the most together person ever. She was loved. She was always on top of what was going on and always looked perfect. She was type A. She was a great mom.”
Robertson was a long-time member of First Baptist Church.
She developed Alzheimer’s and lived with it until passing of breast cancer in her mid-70s.
Allen said while her mother couldn’t follow a recipe or drive a car later in life, and lost parts of her that made her Earline, she remained the lovely, clever, intuitive, hard worker she was for both the city and the church until the end.
The first indications of a problem came when the family began noticing Robertson would repeat questions.
“We thought she wasn’t hearing the question or hearing the answer,” Allen said. “We got her hearing tested. That was not it. Luckily for us, we all went to church with her primary care doctor. I mentioned to him we were having concerns. He said, ‘You know, she doesn’t attend like she did.’ We got an appointment. He did a preliminary test and sent her to a neurologist, who did a more in-depth test, and gave us a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s type dementia.”
Medication helped.
“We had her for another eight or nine years,” Allen said. “Until the very end, her problems were mostly short-term memory, or confined to short-term memory. The medications did what they were supposed to, which was to lessen the progression. It wasn’t going to cure the damage that had already been done.”
Robertson never lost her sense of humor.
“She was a very witty lady. She was very clever. She was very creative. She was the most intuitive person I’ve ever known,” Allen shared. “She didn’t lose that. She could still see what was going on around her and figure out what was going on down the road.”
Allen feels fortunate with how her mother was able to deal with Alzheimer’s.
“Many friends and parents of our friends, who were diagnosed after mom, progressed more quickly and passed away before mom,” Allen said. “She was aware of what the end was going to look like. Because of that, and because of some care we gave to other family members, she was able to tell us, ‘No, you will not do this for me, you will not.’ She was very explicit about what the end was going to be for her.”
Robertson had a pacemaker.
“She told us when the pacemaker battery was running down, we were not to replace it,” Allen said. “At the end, she not only had Alzheimer’s, she had this pacemaker, she had metastatic breast cancer, which she did not want treated. Finally, they had to remove the lump, because it was breaking through the skin. In order to give treatment, they were going to have to move the pacemaker. We didn’t have to ask her to make that decision. We knew from what she had told us, that was not what we should do.”
When her St. Louis doctor said the pacemaker battery was running down, “We along with her primary care doctor had to convince them we were not going to replace that battery,” Allen said. “We got a call a little bit later saying, the battery was not functioning. She had a stroke sometime after that, and passed away two weeks after that.”
She handled that, like she did the rest of her life with as much dignity as possible, Allen said.
“She was very active before the diagnosis. Probably other people she had relationships with didn’t notice because they weren’t with her that much,” she continued. “Once you have a diagnosis, your relationships change. She couldn’t drive. She had been used to picking up other people who couldn’t drive and taking them places. We all said, ‘Well, you know, we’re here to take you where you want to go. If we’re busy, then you’ve been doing this for people for years and somebody will come and get you.’ Well, they didn’t.
“The diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is very isolating because people don’t know how to deal with it. It’s a fearful thing which is exactly the worst thing to happen because you need to keep your social life going.”
Thinking of her own future, Allen asked about genetic testing for herself.
“I actually spoke to the doctor’s nurse. She thought for a bit and she said, ‘We could send you off for this test. Why don’t you just assume that’s in your future, and behave accordingly.’
“She said, ‘Take the trips. Read the books you’ve always wanted to read. Say the words and don’t leave anything unsaid. Plan the way you want your end to be just like your mom was able to do.’ I thought those were the wisest words I have ever heard,” Allen said.
The link for entering teams or donating to the Walk is alz.org/poplarbluff.
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