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George Lerner in the early 50s, the original Mr. Potato Head sold for 98 cents, was the first toy ever advertised on television, and came with pushpin plastic hands, feet, ears, two mouths, two pairs of eyes, four noses, three hats, eyeglasses, a pipe, and eight felt pieces resembling facial hair. Fifty years ago, Hasbro provided a plastic potato body, given complaints of rotting vegetables.
    I think of myself now as Mr. Potato Head with a rotting head and stick-on body parts, depending on my mood and the brain’s diminishing ability to function.
    Before the onset of Alzheimer’s, I thought of my brain as a large depository, a dumping ground of sorts, a large storage bin for stashing a cornucopia of politics, current events, sports, trivia, and points of view that nobody really cares about but me. InAlzheimer’s, the brain atrophies; it shrinks radically, a shrinkage of brain tissue. And I always thought shrinkage was what happened to guys after a dip in a cold ocean.
    â€œGetting old ain’t for sissies,” Bette Davis once opined. She was spot on. We all need to put on our big boy and big girl pants.
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    Daily medications serve to keep my engine in tune and slow a progression of the disease: 23 milligrams daily of Aricept, the Cadillac of Alzheimer’s medication, the legal limit; 20 milligrams of Namenda in a combined therapy that serves to reboot the brain; 50 milligrams of Trazodone to help me sleep; and 20 milligrams of Celexa (Citalopram) to help control the rage on days when I hurl the phone across the room, a perfect strike to the sink, because in the moment I can’t remember how to dial, or when I smash the lawn sprinkler against an oak tree in the backyard because I can’t recall how it works, or when I push open the flaming hot glass door to the family room wood stove barehanded to stoke the fire just because I thought it was a good idea until the skin melts in a third-degree burn, or simply when I cry privately, the tears of a little boy, because I fear that I’m alone, nobody cares, and the innings are starting to fade.
    Hey, I’m not stupid, nor are others with Alzheimer’s; we just have a disease.
    But on particularly down days, in between moments of focus, I feel a bit like a svelte stand-in for Curly Howard of The Three Stooges, lots of running in circles—“nyuk-nyuk-nyuk … woob-woob-woob!” Alzheimer’s is a sickness that runs in circles or meanders for an eventual kill. It’s analogous to the prototypical arcade game Pac-Man in which a pie-faced yellow icon navigates a maze of challenges, eating Pac-dots to get to the next level. While the iconic video game was designed to have no ending, there are no “power pellets” in Alzheimer’s to consume the enemies of ghosts, goblins, and monsters, as this Pac-Man in slow motion consumes brain cells, one by one.
    Game over!
    â€œYou’re a pioneer,” a counselor once urged me in a men’s early-onset Alzheimer’s support group, speaking before a gathering of lawyers, engineers, architects, and a minister—all diagnosed with the disease, and individuals as accomplished as one would find anywhere. “Take good notes,” he urged us.
    I have.
    Having witnessed the demise of family members, seen the anguish firsthand inside nursing homes, felt the disconnect of dementia in intimate terms, I’ve overcome a reticence to speak out. There was a time when I worried about what family, friends, colleagues, and clients would think or say. No longer. I suppose one could say that I’m outing myself now. Gore Vidal once observed, “Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.”
    I don’t give a damn, if that’s what it takes to get the word out.
    As any writer knows, solid reporting follows a stock of knowledge. So, I’ve studied the brain to the extent that I can and have learned, over time, that it is the most