Mike Oliver, who writes frequently about his battle with a fatal brain disease,Lewy body dementia, finally gets some one-on-one time for this exclusive interview with his brain.
ME: Hey brain I need a report, what’s going on up there. I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for days.
BRAIN: Well you should know, it’s your brain up here.
ME: Don’t get smart, brain. Remember you sent me some wrong information yesterday. I thought I saw a herd of cats in our yard having a tea party. I knew instantly it was a hallucination of course.
BRAIN: Yeah that was my bad, these little alpha synuclein proteins are tough little critters; they put the alpha in alpha. They took a couple million of my neurons yesterday and slimed them.
ME: Oh that must have been why I got up at 3:30 a.m. and went downstairs for no reason. I woke up staring at a wall.
BRAIN: I tell you, while I, er, we, have billions of neurons, I can’t keep taking these kind of hits and do my job.
ME: Well listen to me, Brain, I appointed you head of this organization for a reason. I have to say you were the leading candidate by a wide margin over the heart. Don’t get me wrong, I like the heart, but I can’t always trust it.
BRAIN: Yeah I hear you. Too sentimental.
ME: I just need you to play smarter here. This is a serious thing, an inflow of unwanted alpha snoopy proteins.
BRAIN: That’s alpha synuclein … you are confusing words Snoopy is a cartoon dog and you heard alpha and went with the dog thing.
ME: Me?
BRAIN: Well, right, US I guess. The latest research is that the bad proteins may be coming from the gut and climbing up to the brain where they wreak havoc, especially on memory.
ME: Really? Who did that research?
BRAIN: Well you read the same article, right?
ME: Oh, I guess I did. Which brings up another thing my memory sucks, what’s going on with our memory banks?
BRAIN: Well the Tactical Team is holed up in a previous unexplored storage space for the memory. I think they are trapped there like Davy Crockett at the Alamo.
ME: Well, keep up the fight. We may not have the strength to beat them head-on, but we can surely out-think them.
BRAIN: Well that’s a good thought.
ME: Thank you.
BRAIN: Thank you? I thought of it.
ME: No you didn’t. You just processed it for me to know. Look we don’t need to waste time arguing, let’s go get ‘em.
BRAIN: Yes I agree, but I feel a nap coming on.
ME: Funny, me too.
Please help us with your donation or participation in MikeMadness, a basketball tournament (and much more) to raise money for research and awareness of Lewy body dementia and other dementias. Go to www.mikemadness.org to see how how you can help.
Story originally appeared AL.com
Hey There Mike,
My name is Timo, I’m a fellow music lover and I stumbled upon your blog somehow. I’m sure I was looking up reviews of some music I was interested in, and ended up getting hooked on your writing and your story.
Thank you for putting so much information out into the world in such a positive way, and spreading the word about LBD as you do. It’s not an easy subject to tackle, or to even talk about, and you seem to do both supurbly.
I’ll admit that I got hooked on your reviews of your lp collection, as you seem to have some similar tastes as me, but then I found that along with the musical explorations, I was getting more and more interested in your story and your cause. Now I just can’t stop reading.
I hope this finds you well. I’m looking forward to more of your insights, and I enjoy going down the rabbit hole with each new post. I listen along to the artists as I read.
As I was mostly unaware of Lewy-body, you have opened my eyes to the need for more quality research into the condition. So you should know that you are being heard (read) by people who need to know about these things, and your work is appreciated.
Keep up the good work, and keep fighting!
Peace to you and your family,
Timo Daly
Portland, OR
Thanks Timo for writing. It makes me happy because it sounds like you are experiencing the website as I intended.
I blog on music, basektball and Lewy and other things occasionally. I knew it was a weird mix going but I absolutely was aiming at telling my story with this blog as the overriding condition. Stay in touch.
BTW my sister and my daughter live in Portland and are traveling here (Birmingham) for a fund-raiser basketball tournament called MikeMadness– details at http://www.mikemadness.org
Thanks again for the kind words.