After the Fact
Little has changed in the last several months as Alzheimer’s disease takes its relentless toll on 87-year-old twins Ilene Eddy and Irene Peterson.
The sisters continue to live in their Long Beach duplex; they join in monthly card games at a golf course clubhouse, and Ilene still visits the John Douglas French Center in Los Alamitos.
They are “gradually winding down, getting a little bit worse, but not precipitously so,” Larry Lindgren of Camarillo said of his aunts, who in August were introduced to Times Orange County readers in a three-part series. “The most accurate observation would be that they’re gradually declining in their mental abilities.”
Irene, who showed signs of Alzheimer’s six years ago, is in an advanced stage of the disease, which afflicts an estimated 10% of the U.S. population over age 65 and nearly half of those over 85; Ilene is in an early stage of the disease.
By August, Irene was almost totally dependent on others for care, Lindgren said. “That continues to be the case. She’s demonstrated some symptoms of moving to a next stage of Alzheimer’s. She is, I guess you’d say, less cooperative or somewhat more belligerent, which is typical, we understand, as the disease moves along.”
Ilene continues “to function quite well and still has trouble accepting the fact that [Irene] can’t do much about the things [Ilene] tries to correct her doing,” he added.
“Both are physically in good health, and Ilene is still cogent and carries on a conversation. But she continues to repeat things, and, if anything, she’ll repeat a little more now.”
The twins, who will turn 88 on Jan. 30, receive daytime help from a home health aide. Ilene cares for her sister alone at night.
The twins will keep this living arrangement “as long as they can,” Lindgren said. Meanwhile, the family is exploring options, including the Brittany House, a residential facility in Long Beach that specializes in patients with Alzheimer’s.
In fact, Ilene and Irene will visit the place soon, when their duplex is tented for termites. “We want them to get acquainted with the folks there,” Lindgren said. “Maybe they’ll decide they like it” and want to stay.
Even if the twins return home this time, their nephew said, their ability to be alone at night “could change at any moment, and we’d like to be ready so [moving to a care facility] isn’t too much of a shock for Ilene. With Irene, of course, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference” where she is living.”
Meanwhile, Ilene attends the day program for adults at the French Center for Alzheimer’s three days a week. And, as they’ve done since the late 1940s, the sisters still visit with old friends at their monthly samba card game.
