Linda Dano Speaks Up for Alzh... Video Transcript

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, Linda Dano Television

Summary

The father of television personality Linda Dano experienced years of mental deterioration before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Hear Linda describe how her family coped.

Webcast Transcript

LINDA DANO: When my father first started to get older and cranky, I wrote it off as a John Wayne-type not liking getting older, because that would have been like my father, to be really annoyed that he couldn't remember or that he was tired, or whatever it was.

ANNOUNCER: Linda Dano is a daytime TV actress and a talk show host in New York City, three thousand miles from where her parents lived in California. Her dad, Ted Wildermuth, wasn't just frustrated and irritable. He had Alzheimer's disease. But Linda didn't know that.

LINDA DANO: My mother never, ever told me that he was breaking up the house, that he would wander off and no one could find him, and some, some neighbor would bring him home. She never told me that he got stuck in the car once because he didn't know how to get home, and a policeman brought him home. None of that. So I wasn't privy to any of that.

ANNOUNCER: But something else was going on, too: Denial.

LINDA DANO: You just — you can't bear it. It's too hard to bear, and you just don't want to. So your mother doesn't tell you. You pretend it's not happening, and, maybe Saturday morning you'll wake up and everything will be fine again. I mean, I don't know what we do, but we do it.

ANNOUNCER: When it became clear her mom and dad needed help, Linda became proactive, deciding to move her parents to New York City, to live with her and her husband, Frank. It couldn't have gone worse.

LINDA DANO: You know, it was going to be a great life. My mother and dad were going to be with me, and we were going to take care of them, and none of that happened. I mean, it happened, but not like I planned it at all. My father got on that plane, and when he got to my apartment that day with Frank and my mother, he knew me. He called me by name. He hugged and kissed me. And four days later my father never called me by name again.

He just was terrified. He didn't know where he was. His agitation got so much more severe. In four days he destroyed the apartment. He tried to harm my mother. I mean, he did not know what he was doing, and he was so afraid.

ANNOUNCER: Linda's father was in late-stage Alzheimer's, but remarkably, he still had not been diagnosed. He fell, and Linda took him to an emergency room. No bones were broken, but her father was placed in the psych ward.

LINDA DANO: And at one point, after about two and a half weeks, my father chose not to eat. He wasn't eating. I couldn't get him to eat. And he was just comatose the whole time he was there. He wouldn't respond. He didn't talk to me. He didn't talk to my mother. And I was told that I had to give him a feeding tube. And I did.

ANNOUNCER: Linda then asked an expert in geriatrics from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine to see her father.

LINDA DANO: And he turned to me after he'd been with my father for five minutes and he said, "Linda, your father has Alzheimer's." And I — "Okay. All right. What is that?" I had no idea. I said, "Is that like a fancy name for senility?" And he said, "No. It's dementia." And he explained what it is and what happens, and he named all my father's symptoms.

ANNOUNCER: Linda's dad was placed in a nursing home, where he died three and a half years later. Helping care for him while pressing on with her career took a toll.

LINDA DANO: And it almost took care of me. I mean, I just — I felt myself sinking every day. A little more every day. And I was working. I was on "Another World," and I was playing the flamboyant Felicia Gallant, and no one knew.