Take a Walk

By Bud Focht

Hi, my name is Bud and my wife Terry and I took a nice walk last Sunday.

It wasn’t 10,000 steps (which is approximately five miles and the recommended distance to walk over the course of a day for fitness and weight loss) but it was nice.

This time of year many people are taking nice walks, now that the air is a bit cooler and the trees are turning beautiful colors.

Besides, regular, brisk exercise of any kind can reduce stress and improve confidence, stamina, energy and life expectancy.

Life expectancy is the reason we were walking last Sunday.

This past weekend I took Terry back to her hometown of Pawtucket, Rhode Island (in New England it is pronounced ‘puh TUCK it, row DIE len’) for a Walk to End Alzheimer’s.

We were two of over 2,000 walkers in attendance, which broke all fundraising efforts in the history of the walk in the smallest state in the union.

Terry and I live in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and there is a Walk coming up in Philadelphia, but this past weekend is the Walk I needed to take her to. In addition to being in her home town, the Walk was in Slater Park, where Terry won many tennis trophies at the City Tennis Tournament in the 1970s.

At the Walk people are given large plastic flowers to carry. Blue flowers are for people who have Alzheimer’s. Yellow flowers are for the caregivers. Orange flowers are for people who contribute to the cause, and Purple flowers are for people who have lost loved ones to this horrible disease, the sixth leading cause of death in America.

Before the Walk started the organizing committee asked one person representing each of the four flower groups to come up on stage, and the emcee, local television anchorman Mike Montecalvo, said a few words about each one of them. Terry was one of the four people asked to come up on stage, holding her Blue flower, and he spoke of Terry coming home to the park where she was a tennis star for a “Walk to Remember.”

Talk about your tear-jerking moments.

Before that, when Terry and I were waiting for the festivities to begin, a woman came up to Terry and asked her where she got her flower. Terry looked to me for help. I showed the woman where the flowers are being given out and I told her “if you have any more questions, whatever you do, don’t ask someone who has a Blue flower.”

Terry got a big kick out of that. Even with her cognitive impairment due to her Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease, she still has most of the personality I feel in love with 36 years ago. She can still laugh. She still has her sense of humor.

You would be hard pressed to find anything positive about having Alzheimer’s. But if there is a very, very remote consolation, it would be that my old jokes still make Terry laugh. No matter how many times I have told them.

I often ask Terry “How you feeling?” When she responds in a positive manner I always follow up with “Good, because you look like shit.” and she always laughs. Or I’ll say to her “you know I wouldn’t trade you for anything. What the hell would I get for you?”

However I have seemed to have lost some of my sense of humor recently. Or so I’ve been told.

A few people have told me that the reason they liked my blog in the beginning was because of my demented look at things. They liked how I was able to make them laugh in one paragraph and cry in another.  But they’ve said that lately there seems to be more crying and less laughing.

Well, as one of the top comedians of the 1970s, Steve Martin, used to say, “Excuuuusssse Meeeee!”

I saw Steve Martin perform when he first arrived on the scene in the late 1970s, wearing his white suit and the fake arrow through the head. No one older than two years old thinks a fake arrow through the head is funny, but the fact that Martin acted like HE thought it would be funny was classic.

I wonder why I do not seem as funny as in the past. I wonder if the plaques (abnormal clusters of protein fragments building up between nerve cells) and tangles (twisted strands of protein that destroy the vital cell transport system) forming in Terry’s brain have anything to do with that.

On the walk through Slater Park there were many volunteers along the way. As we walked past one I yelled out “Hi Lisa.” and I waved to her. She answered tentatively “Oh, hi.” with a big question mark on her smiling face that said “How does he know me? Do I know him?” The fact is we’ve never seen each other before, and most likely never will again.  But she was wearing a name tag. I told everyone within earshot: “She seemed bored but now I gave her something to think about the rest of the walk. That is going to bother her the rest of the day, trying to figure out who I am.”

I dread the day that Terry has that same look as Lisa had, wondering who I am. I dread even more the day I am given a Purple flower at one of these Walks.

When I first signed up for the Walk I donated $200, $100 for me and $100 for Terry. That was the minimal amount you had to donate to be given a tee shirt. Well, Terry’s family got into the donating act, and several of my old friends got into the act, and before you knew it there was over $1600 donated to the cause in Terry’s name.

Now what am I going to do with 16 tee shirts? I guess I’ll have to start a softball team.

We didn’t really get 16 tee shirts, but the Rhode Island Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association did get over $1600 from Team Larivee (Terry’s maiden name) and the Walk raised over $400,000, surpassing their goal.

So Terry and I were not the only ones who had a nice Walk on Sunday.

The Alzheimer’s Association works on a global, national and local level to enhance care and support for all those affected by Alzheimer’s and other dementias. They have local chapters across the country, providing services within each community. They have helplines offering advice and information. The organization runs close to 5,000 support groups.

And they Walk. The annual Walk to End Alzheimer’s is the world’s largest event to raise awareness and funds for Alzheimer’s care, support and research. I am very grateful to my friends and family for donating to such a worthy cause.

Many people enjoy walking as a recreation and it is one of the best forms of exercise. For some walking is a way to enjoy nature and the outdoors and for others the physical, sporting and endurance aspect is more important.

Terry and I have always enjoyed walking, as we got older and could no longer run. Governments now recognize the benefits of walking for mental and physical health and are actively encouraging it. This growing emphasis on walking has arisen because people walk less nowadays than ever before.

Walking is one of the easiest ways to get the exercise you need to stay healthy. It is good for the heart and good for the brain. Mortality rates among retired people who walked less than one mile per day were nearly twice that among those who walked more than two miles per day.  In a study on walking and cognitive function, researchers found that women who walked the equivalent of an easy pace at least 1.5 hours per week had significantly better cognitive function and less cognitive decline than women who walked less than 40 minutes per week.

So we will continue to walk as much as we can.  Not as a fund raiser, but as a cognitive function raiser.

Until next time, take a walk.

Bud