My Grandmother and Mike Roglia

Joshua Trent Brown My Grandmother and Mike Roglia

My grandmother forgot who most of us were.

She forgot who her caretakers were, leading her to accuse a registered

nurse of stealing jewelry. She forgot who my mother was multiple times and left

my mom in a sobbing panic afterwards.

She couldn’t remember how to cook her famous Crisco-fried chicken.

She couldn’t remember her battle with diabetes and the long walks that she

used to take every day to lose weight. Some days she couldn’t remember my

grandfather Horace was dead.

But she didn’t forget who I was. She hugged me the same way she always

did, possibly because she thought I was my uncle Frank—at 14, I looked just like

him. She might have stared at me a little longer than usual, but she always liked

to stare at me, even up to the day she died. She still saw me as a child, her baby,

and just wanted to be around me. I was lucky, not having to see much of what

had been taken from her.

My grandmother had Alzheimer’s Disease.

What we saw on the outside was a mix of blissful interactions with

so many new people around her and occasional discomfort and anger at her

inability to remember. What was happening on the inside was a complex disease

of proteins that form plaques and tangles in the brain.

Those plaques and tangles starve the brain cells and nervous system

pathways, killing them. When those brain connections go, so do memories and

other functions.

Dr. Carol Colton, a professor of neurology at Duke University who

researches the brain’s immune system, explained that science’s understanding of

the disease is imprecise. What prompts the onset of the disease and the formation

on attacking specific proteins instead of looking at the bigger picture of its overall

cause.

One of the biggest questions she has about the disease is a controversial

one: Does the immune system attack those proteins because they are harmful to

the brain, or is the immune system what causes them to form?

This is the question that Dr. Colton says could unlock the Alzheimer’s

mystery.

In fact, she was one of the first scientists to discover a cell that acts as the

first line of defense in the brain—the microglia. When I went to her office, Dr.

Colton handed me a sticker: “You should take it, it’s so adorable.” On the front

was a cartoon depiction of a janitor-like cell with multiple squiggly arms named

Mike Roglia.

Using the stickers as characters in her story, Dr. Colton gave a long and

detailed explanation of what may have happened to my grandmother’s brain and

why it killed her. She knows the story well, not just because of her research, but

also through her own experience with her mother who died of Alzheimer’s.

She explained that my grandmother had most likely carried the

APOE4/4 gene, or two APOE4 alleles. Having one allele means that your risk

of getting Alzheimer’s disease are slightly raised, so having two meant that my

grandmother’s chances were multiplied by twelve. Her diabetes didn’t help either.

With her body’s poor production of glucose, the starvation of her brain cells and

neurons was most likely accelerated.

There’s a good chance that I have at least one of the APOE4 alleles as

well: something to think about, but not dwell on.

While she took me through an explanation of why the brain is susceptible

to the tangles and plaques, Dr. Colton waved a sticker in the air and tossed it

in a pile of a few others. Myrtle Tangullis, a female character, looked like a

squid version of Medusa. Cute, admittedly, but a little morbid. She’s one of the

‘anarchy aggregates,’ as titled on the sticker, a mysterious bunch that may have

killed the brain cells in my grandmother and many others.

As morbid as it may be, I’ve decided to keep that little Mike Roglia

sticker on my desk as a memento, right beside a Mr. Rogers bobblehead. My

grandmother was my first line of defense—my microglia—when I was a child,

telling my mom to let me off when I was a bad kid sometimes. She was sweet on

me like only a grandma can be.

Mr. Roglia gave me something tangible to hold onto, if nothing else.

On Christmas Eve of 2012, three months before her death, I brought

my friend Chris to a family party. When we entered the kitchen doorway, my

grandmother met us there, smiling with arms wide open. She told me how

beautiful I was, like always. Then, she turned towards Chris, smiled, and hugged

his neck just as hard. She told him how much he’d grown since she last saw him.

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Chris.

She had never seen him before, but in the moment, she truly believed

that he was just another grandchild, one of her beautiful babies. Plaques and

tangles would starve and kill my grandmother’s brain, but she never forgot how to

hug her children.

-Joshua Trent Brown recently graduated from the Hussman School of Journalism and Media with a B.A. in Reporting and a minor in Christianity and Culture. He is from Cerro Gordo, NC and is currently a reporter at the News & Observer.-