An Alzheimer's widow

Oakland Tribune, Apr 28, 2007 by Candace Murphy

IT'S 10 A.M. and Fabiola Trejo is greeting the day with a hammer in hand.

"Will you look at this? Just look at this," she says, pointing to a wooden gate that separates her backyard garden from the street in front of her home.

The gate, though new, is falling to pieces. When a wooden support dares to fall to the ground in front of her, she raises the hammer threateningly.

"I'm so mad at my handyman," she says. "Look at this. This gate is brand new and it's falling apart. Look. Look at these nails. Who uses nails this short to hammer pieces of wood together?"

Disgusted, Fabiola finds a longer nail and thwacks it into place. She tests the piece to make sure it holds, and, satisfied with her work, mops her brow with her sleeve.

"I tell you," she says, "being on your own, it's not a piece of cake." ------------

Fabiola never thought she'd be alone, not now, at age 78.

She didn't think it in the spring of 1945 when Robert Trejo, the man who would woo her relentlessly, first swaggered into her family's meat market and grocery store on Chicago's North Side.

She didn't think it when she and Robert married later that year. Didn't think it when they moved to the Bay Area and had two children. Didn't think it when Robert retired in 1985.

She didn't even think it back in 2002, when Robert, at the age of 79, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

"I'd never heard the word 'Alzheimer' before in my life," says Fabiola of the disease named after Alois Alzheimer, the German neurologist who first described the brain disorder in 1907. "Nobody mentioned that word when I was in my middle age. We used to call it senility. When Robert started forgetting things, I'd joke about it. I used to joke, 'You know, Daddy's getting senile.'"

It's easy to understand why Fabiola never feared for the future. With Robert by her side, five decades of her life were uneventful in the way that life is predictably eventful.

They watched their baby girl, Linda, then their baby boy, Robert Anthony, grow up and move out. They worked, Robert as a welder with Peterbilt Motors, and Fabiola part-time at a fabric shop. They tended their lush backyard garden, Fabiola whole-heartedly, and Robert only so that he could carve a few more hours out of the week to be with his wife.

Though money was always tight, they managed to take a few trips. The most far flung was a holiday in Alaska, to visit young Robert Anthony after he moved to the small town of Healey, just outside Denali National Park. They visited Chicago, too, to see Fabiola's old stomping grounds and where their love first blossomed.

Life was simple enough.

Until the Alzheimer's.

A disorder of the brain's cells, Alzheimer's is an unforgiving, progressive disease. It impairs memory, thinking and behavior. Ultimately, it leads to death.

Though more than 4.5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's, neither Fabiola nor Robert had heard of it before. When Robert started misplacing his billfold, the gardening spade, his keys, the two chalked it up to senior moments. It wasn't until he started getting lost and driving erratically that Fabiola thought something was amiss.

A few months later, a doctor and a neurologist confirmed the Alzheimer's diagnosis. Robert was too far down the path paved by his dementia to even understand the prognosis.

"I don't think he grasped it," says Fabiola. "We came home from the doctor and I said, 'You have a disease. It's going to get worse. You won't remember me or the children.' He said, 'Is that bad?' And I said, 'Yes.' And then he said, 'Well, wouldn't it be better if I took my life?'"

Fabiola pauses, and shakes her head. She remembers hiding the panic in her voice as she delivered Robert a swift rebuke.

"I said, 'No! Why would you do that? I will take care of you,'" she recounts. "We always promised to take care of each other."

------------

Taking care of an Alzheimer's patient, as Fabiola learned, is a full-time job. Not long after Robert's diagnosis, Fabiola was having to do everything. In the morning, she'd lay out his clothes. She'd set the water temperature for his shower. She'd help him wash. Then dress. And when he wasn't looking, she'd rush his dirty clothes to the hamper because otherwise, he'd put those on too.

Then Fabiola would go to the kitchen and lay out breakfast. Though the couple had lived in their Newark home since 1960, Robert no longer knew how to find the food, dishes or utensils. He soon didn't even know how to eat -- until Fabiola showed him what to do.

"She couldn't leave him alone for two seconds," says Fabiola's daughter Linda Thomason, 57, who lives in Fremont, about a 20- minute drive away from her mother. "He'd wash his mouth with Brylcreem and put toothpaste on his head. My mom had no rest."

Believe it or not, those were the good old days. Unlike the last two years, when Robert began flying into rages or waking up at 2 in the morning for a walk in their dark and deserted neighborhood.