Speaker 1: This is Latino USA, the radio journal of News and
Speaker 1: Kurturre Latino USA.
Speaker 2: Latin Latino USA. I'm Maria Inojosa.
Speaker 1: We bring you stories that are underreported but that mattered
Speaker 1: to you, overlooked by the rest of the media, and
Speaker 1: while the country is struggling to deal with these, we
Speaker 1: listen to the stories of Black and Latino Studios United,
Speaker 1: Latino Front, a cultural renaissance organizing at the forefront of
Speaker 1: the movement. I'm Maria Inojosa, ge Paso Latino USA. Listener Gostas.
Speaker 1: Today we continue our look at thirty years of impactful
Speaker 1: journalism made right here on Latino USA. This time it's
Speaker 1: an award winning episode from our archives. Here's Alzheimer's in color.
Speaker 2: Hello, So this is my life. Every week I have
Speaker 2: a skype call into my mom's nursing home in the Bronx. Hi, Mommy,
Speaker 2: it's Yvonne ybond Eha. Each call starts more or less
Speaker 2: the same. I reintroduced myself to my mother and remind
Speaker 2: her that this is her daughter, Yvonne speaking. How are
Speaker 2: you feeling? This is Margo.
Speaker 3: Margita Dunieta, my younger daughter Margot is on this call
Speaker 3: and we are trying to get my mom to recognize us.
Speaker 2: She's got Alzheimer's disease and it's been hell, and COVID
Speaker 2: nineteen has made it worse. The last time I saw
Speaker 2: her in person was in March. She knew who I was.
Speaker 2: Then it was a week before the coronavirus shut down
Speaker 2: in New York City, where she lives.
Speaker 4: We wants to inform you that we have the senior
Speaker 4: confirmation that an individual at Best Abraham's Center has been
Speaker 4: diagnosed with COVID nineteen.
Speaker 2: And now I get endless robo calls telling me that
Speaker 2: the virus is in her nursing home. People are dying there.
Speaker 2: I know I am losing her every second of every
Speaker 2: day if COVID doesn't take her Alzheimer's will.
Speaker 5: While we understand the inconvenience this may cause, it is
Speaker 5: crucial that we restrict visitations to reduce the spread of
Speaker 5: this virus.
Speaker 2: And it sucks, and the sky calls her hard. She
Speaker 2: is distant, unfocused. She can barely speak a few words
Speaker 2: and they rarely make sense. I was told to use
Speaker 2: music to reach her, Mama. She loves Latin music, she
Speaker 2: loves to dance, and so I try my Mom's name
Speaker 2: is Ramona Laddie or Ramanita Mota Laddie or Ramona Novelli
Speaker 2: Amota Haemo send Laddie if I want to tease.
Speaker 5: Her, noamnt.
Speaker 2: Nova Nova Nova Oi Oi, Novelia Oi a very ugly name.
Speaker 2: You used to tell me when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: You hated your middle name. She's eighty seven and it's
Speaker 2: been four years now since she was diagnosed. Four years
Speaker 2: of the lonely journey, which in the end, I walk
Speaker 2: alone because my mom has no idea what day it is,
Speaker 2: what year it is, how old she is, or where
Speaker 2: she is.
Speaker 5: You don't know who I am.
Speaker 2: You promised me you were never gonna forget me, and
Speaker 2: look at you not forgetting me. Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: From Fudro Media and PRX. It's Latino USA. I'm Maria
Speaker 1: Nojosa Today. An intimate an intergenerational portrait of one woman's
Speaker 1: journey with Alzheimer's and her family's commitment to remembering her life.
Speaker 1: For many aging Latinos, Latinas and African Americans, Alzheimer's disease
Speaker 1: has become one of the leading health crises. Access to healthcare,
Speaker 1: pre existing conditions, the quality of institutions that help aging
Speaker 1: people of color. All of these disparities become amplified by
Speaker 1: a diagnosis of Alzheimer's. As more people live longer, the
Speaker 1: challenges around Alzheimer's keep growing. Experts predict that by twenty
Speaker 1: sixty there could be an over eight hundred percent growth
Speaker 1: of Latinos with this incurable degenerative form of dementia. For
Speaker 1: journalist Ivon Latin, this story is personal. Her mother, Ramona Latti,
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with Alzheimer's in twenty sixteen. Yvonne has been
Speaker 1: documenting her mother's illness and brings us this intimate portrait
Speaker 1: of her mom's life before and after Alzheimer's.
Speaker 2: Hello, Ola, I love my mom, I really really do.
Speaker 2: I can't say I have understood her or the decisions
Speaker 2: she's made. I can't say she understood me either. I
Speaker 2: can't say we belong on a latinx American experienced Hallmark card,
Speaker 2: or that our mother daughter bond is unique. She pissed
Speaker 2: me off and could be a pain in the ass.
Speaker 2: I know she would say that about me too. You know,
Speaker 2: the teen that likes to wear black and locks herself
Speaker 2: in her messy room with her headphones on. All the
Speaker 2: time that was me. We had some epic battles, for sure.
Speaker 2: In some ways, I think we were the same person,
Speaker 2: living different extremes, each wanting so much more than what
Speaker 2: is expected of women like us. My mom faced dirt,
Speaker 2: poor poverty in the Dominican Republic where she was born.
Speaker 2: She joined a wave of immigration to the US at nineteen,
Speaker 2: and she surpassed every challenge thrown her way. I'm not
Speaker 2: ashamed to say I am desperate to connect with her,
Speaker 2: to understand her story and make it mine. Until the
Speaker 2: world Ramona Laddie, my mom matters. My name is, said
Speaker 2: Ramona Latti. That was just four years ago, whilst going happens,
Speaker 2: going to happen. I'm mad. I watch you though, might
Speaker 2: sort of thing any see, don't worry, don't march. This
Speaker 2: was right after her diagnosis, when we could still talk
Speaker 2: to each other, and we were going on endless doctors
Speaker 2: visits looking for some hope, a treatment, way to slow
Speaker 2: the disease down. Some before scared of bit, but you're
Speaker 2: not scared now.
Speaker 3: I'm how scared of that I've Paiduto's society.
Speaker 2: Since my mother said those words, her life went on
Speaker 2: a rapid decline. The threat that holds us together gets thinner,
Speaker 2: The conversation's more difficult, and my profound sadness over losing
Speaker 2: her harder to manage.
Speaker 6: My first impressions were that she she was able to
Speaker 6: propel her wheelchair with her feet, not her hands.
Speaker 2: These days, my lifeline is the staff at the Beth
Speaker 2: Abraham Nursing Home in the Bronx where my mom lives.
Speaker 2: This is her nurse practitioner, Iris Nagan. She has supported
Speaker 2: me on countless occasions. Iris started working with my mom
Speaker 2: in January of twenty nineteen.
Speaker 6: She seemed to communicate a little better in Spanish than
Speaker 6: in English. The impoverishment of speech and often the inability
Speaker 6: to walk are connected to having had dementia for a while.
Speaker 5: Theever that's a song that I wrote that don't.
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's is a brain disease. It slowly destroys your memories,
Speaker 2: Your ability to think, speak, walk, talk, Even the simplest
Speaker 2: tasks become impossible. It's a wicked form of dementia and
Speaker 2: it will slowly kill you. The type of Alzheimer's my
Speaker 2: mom has is not genetic, but my odds of getting
Speaker 2: the disease are slightly higher because she has it. Visiting
Speaker 2: my mom is always hard, and when I don't see her,
Speaker 2: I worry and feel guilty, and I don't even know
Speaker 2: if my skype calls help her at all.
Speaker 6: At this point, I guess really is one of the
Speaker 6: things that happens with dementia is the world gets very,
Speaker 6: very small.
Speaker 2: And always tells me that these visits and calls are
Speaker 2: hard on my mother as well.
Speaker 6: Hi, and I think when people come from the outside world,
Speaker 6: they bring with them expectations, and I think the expectations
Speaker 6: can be hard.
Speaker 2: On someone who has advanced dementia. But that has been
Speaker 2: the challenge of the disease, understanding it and holding on
Speaker 2: to Ramona Laddie. I find myself thinking about where she
Speaker 2: came from, who she was, her story pre Alzheimer's, because
Speaker 2: Alzheimer's is not who she is. It's not her story,
Speaker 2: It's just how her story ends. My mom dropped out
Speaker 2: of school in the eighth grade to take care of
Speaker 2: her little brother so her mom could work. Her father
Speaker 2: died when she was twelve. She barely knew him. In
Speaker 2: the late nineteen forties, her mother and aunt came to
Speaker 2: New York City. It was the first wave of Dominican immigration,
Speaker 2: and although many were fleeing the brutal dictator Raphael Ruhedro.
Speaker 7: Picturesque Trujlio City, capital of the Dominican Republic, turns out
Speaker 7: for the inauguration of a president, for whom the city
Speaker 7: is named. General Trugulio is the strong man of the Republic.
Speaker 2: Many were just looking for work and an escape from poverty.
Speaker 2: My then teen mom was left to take care of
Speaker 2: everything at home, which now included her aunt's children.
Speaker 8: But then immigration has brought in many people from the
Speaker 8: Caribbean area. Most of the immigrants went into the factories
Speaker 8: and found their homes in the tenements of America's growing city.
Speaker 2: In nineteen fifty, she got a chance to come to
Speaker 2: New York City. She was nineteen, and she got a
Speaker 2: job in a pocketbook factory and went to beauty school.
Speaker 2: It's such a New York City story. She met Albert,
Speaker 2: my dad, in a beauty parlor in Spanish Harlem run
Speaker 2: by a Cuban woman who was married to a Jamaican
Speaker 2: man and as a result, had Jamaican customers, which included
Speaker 2: my grandmother. My dad went to pick her up one day,
Speaker 2: saw my mom in the beauty parlor and it was
Speaker 2: love at first sight, even though she spoke no English
Speaker 2: and he spoke no Spanish.
Speaker 9: Hello, Hello, Hi on Grace, aw you Okay, hold on
Speaker 9: a minute. Social distancing needs creating more crystal place.
Speaker 4: Between yourself and others.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to start a few years into my
Speaker 2: mom's journey in New York City, and to do that,
Speaker 2: I reached out to Grace Lawrence, or Aunt Grace, who
Speaker 2: has been very close to my mom for over sixty.
Speaker 9: Years, and we became fast friends.
Speaker 2: On Grace's ninety four lives in Queen's and her memory,
Speaker 2: unlike my mom's, is sharp as attack.
Speaker 9: Okay, I might as well say, okay, when my age
Speaker 9: things happened up and down, but I'm okay, so.
Speaker 4: To sleave it at that.
Speaker 2: And Grace told me that she met my mom in
Speaker 2: the late nineteen fifties through my dad.
Speaker 9: Well, I know that he became very close and he
Speaker 9: wanted to meet his girlfriend. His girlfriend at that time
Speaker 9: it was grand Mama, So he didn't say that much
Speaker 9: about her except that she was Spanish.
Speaker 2: That's what they called latinos back then, Spanish.
Speaker 9: And of course that didn't bother me at all.
Speaker 5: When you first met my mother, what did you what
Speaker 5: did you think of about her?
Speaker 9: Like your mother up to dance.
Speaker 4: She was so pretty and vivacious, and.
Speaker 2: That's how I remember her dancing with us in the
Speaker 2: kitchen to disco, salsa, meringe. Everything was hips, hips, hips,
Speaker 2: didn't matter the music.
Speaker 9: She really was a beautiful young lady. And of course
Speaker 9: you know your mama was very stylish. She was always stylish.
Speaker 2: Greece's parents were from Barbados and immigrants, so and Grace
Speaker 2: knew about the prejudice that existed between some Caribbean blacks
Speaker 2: towards Latino's, which my mom walked right into by loving
Speaker 2: my dad.
Speaker 9: Albert's mother was Jamaican and she was a very strict lady,
Speaker 9: very flapa, and unfortunately she did not want to come
Speaker 9: to the wedding because her mona was Spanish.
Speaker 2: So what was happening was this My grandmother was raised
Speaker 2: by a well off family in Jamaica, and although she
Speaker 2: was a maid in New York, she felt her son
Speaker 2: was too good for my mom.
Speaker 9: She was very disappointed she didn't come to the wedding,
Speaker 9: but that did not stop the wedding.
Speaker 2: Unt Grace was the matron of honor.
Speaker 4: The wind went on and.
Speaker 9: Your father kissed his wife. She was so proud of her.
Speaker 2: But my grandmother, Nana did not accept the marriage. Nana
Speaker 2: was a dark skinned woman who would not accept the
Speaker 2: light skinned Latina in her family. My mom came from
Speaker 2: the Dominican Republic, a country with extremely negative attitudes towards
Speaker 2: black skin, but she didn't care that my father was black.
Speaker 2: The story on my father's side of the family was different.
Speaker 2: My mom was Spanish and that was enough to be rejected.
Speaker 9: Ramona really worked established a relationship with her mother in.
Speaker 2: Law, and this is something I really admire about my mother.
Speaker 2: She did not give up picture this. My mom lived
Speaker 2: on one hundred and h Street near Central Park West,
Speaker 2: and my grandmother was just about six blocks away. My
Speaker 2: father would visit Nana every week without my mom. So
Speaker 2: she worked on being the best version of herself to
Speaker 2: figure this out. She worked on her English, she worked
Speaker 2: on being a good wife, and she had hope no
Speaker 2: matter how much she was ignored and rejected. But it
Speaker 2: took the birth of my older sister, Margie in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty to finally warm my grandmother's heart. On my next
Speaker 2: Skype call to my mother, I try to bring up
Speaker 2: our old address fifteen was one hundred and h Street.
Speaker 2: Remember one hundred and h Street. Maybe that a dress
Speaker 2: the names of her family would trigger a memory Margie.
Speaker 2: Remember Margie?
Speaker 5: Do iha Margie?
Speaker 2: But I came up empty. My talk with Aunt Grace
Speaker 2: and April left me wanting more. The mom I have
Speaker 2: had for years now is a shadow of who she was,
Speaker 2: and I want that mother back so badly. Coming up
Speaker 2: on Latino, USA, she.
Speaker 10: Was seeing this boy in her apartment, this like evil boy,
Speaker 10: and at one point it got so bad that she
Speaker 10: was hiding knives so that she could stab the boy.
Speaker 1: Stay with us, Yes, hey, we're back. And before the break,
Speaker 1: journalist yvon Latti had introduced us to her mother's world
Speaker 1: and what it's like to have advanced Alzheimer's disease in
Speaker 1: the middle of a COVID nineteen crisis. We return now
Speaker 1: to Yvonne's intimate portrait of her life with Ramona, and
Speaker 1: just a warning, there's some offensive language in.
Speaker 2: This part of the story. In mid April, about a
Speaker 2: month after the COVID lockdown started in New York, I
Speaker 2: recruited Nola, my oldest daughter, to help me dig through
Speaker 2: some old photos I keep in a big plastic bin
Speaker 2: in our home in Philadelphia. I took these photos out
Speaker 2: of my mom's photo albums when I cleaned out her
Speaker 2: apartment after she was placed in the nursing home. The
Speaker 2: day I packed them three years ago, I was crying, confused,
Speaker 2: and disappointed in myself for not being able to slow
Speaker 2: down the inevitable. I have not looked at the photos since. Nola,
Speaker 2: this is my mom's wedding picture.
Speaker 5: I've seen this one. It's really pretty.
Speaker 2: Nola is twenty one and studies acting and directing at NYU.
Speaker 2: We're sitting on an old yellow sofa in the basement
Speaker 2: and the first photo we pull out is an eleven
Speaker 2: x fourteen black and white wedding picture. What do you
Speaker 2: think of her dress?
Speaker 5: I love her dress.
Speaker 2: I love all the lace in the photo. My mom
Speaker 2: is where a beautiful white lace dress and in her
Speaker 2: arms a bouquet of white flowers. My dad is in
Speaker 2: a dark suit behind her, holding her. She has a
Speaker 2: slight smile on her face. She's twenty six, and she
Speaker 2: looks almost regal and ready for what's next. She looks
Speaker 2: like you, Yeah, do you see yourself in her?
Speaker 7: M H?
Speaker 5: I think you've.
Speaker 2: Always Nola looking like my mom has always given me comfort.
Speaker 2: Nola and my mom were always close. She was her Nolita,
Speaker 2: her oldest grandchild, and she loved to cook Dominican food
Speaker 2: for her and buy her clothes. But these photos reveal
Speaker 2: an Albuerlita Nola had never seen.
Speaker 5: Waita wait, what's this one?
Speaker 2: Nola pulls out a black and white photo booth image
Speaker 2: of my mom taken in the early nineteen fifties, that's
Speaker 2: when she first came to this country. She looks so
Speaker 2: good in this picture. She's looking away from the camera
Speaker 2: in a playful way. She's wearing hoop earrings and dark lipstick.
Speaker 2: The photo seems timeless. She's like working it. Can I
Speaker 2: have this?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I really like this picture. She looks like you and
Speaker 5: this really yeah, she looks like you.
Speaker 2: When people tell me I look like my mom, I
Speaker 2: don't believe it. Oh my god, what a compliment. She
Speaker 2: looks so pretty. We are different colors. She's light skinned
Speaker 2: and I am dark skinned. I think she's way prettier
Speaker 2: than me. She's petite while I'm five eight. And when
Speaker 2: I was growing up, there was this idea that the
Speaker 2: lighter skins you are, the prettier I tried to explain
Speaker 2: this to Nola, and I was in light skin that
Speaker 2: I wasn't even my mother's complexion or Margie's complexion. I
Speaker 2: was darker than my dad, and my darker skin led
Speaker 2: to bullying. I was called ugly and mocked. The first
Speaker 2: time I was called a nigger, I was in third
Speaker 2: grade and it was by light skinned Latino classmates. We were,
Speaker 2: you know, the ugly ones, and there was nothing I
Speaker 2: could do to change the color of my skin. My
Speaker 2: mom indirectly reinforced in negativity by constantly commenting on my
Speaker 2: hair and forcing me into painful, smaller shoes because she
Speaker 2: didn't want me to have big feet. Although she was
Speaker 2: rejected by my grandmother for being Spanish, she held some
Speaker 2: form of internalized racism which was directed in me and
Speaker 2: my hair. Black hair is bad. Straight hair is good,
Speaker 2: you know, like the hair had to be relaxed, it
Speaker 2: had to be pressed. I couldn't sweat. Everything had to
Speaker 2: be about my appearance, and I was a tomboy. I
Speaker 2: wanted to play sports and wanted to run around. My
Speaker 2: hair didn't really go natural until you were born. And
Speaker 2: when you were born and she saw you, one of
Speaker 2: the first things she said to me, was how old
Speaker 2: does she have to be before we can strain her hair?
Speaker 2: That was the game changer. I never relaxed my hair again,
Speaker 2: and my mom had to live with both my daughter's curls.
Speaker 2: Growing up with my mom could be frustrating. There were
Speaker 2: a lot of extremes. I grew up on one hundred
Speaker 2: and h Street between Manhattan Avenue and Central Park West.
Speaker 2: It was rough back then, and my mom would not
Speaker 2: let us out of the house. My outside space was
Speaker 2: the fire escape. I wanted to share what that was
Speaker 2: like with my daughter Nola. There were murders and people
Speaker 2: got raped, and it's a lot of robberies. One of
Speaker 2: my early memories is one afternoon when my mom went
Speaker 2: shopping and came home with a red welt across her face.
Speaker 2: She had been robbed. She had a man's handprint on
Speaker 2: her face because he slapped her so hard when he
Speaker 2: robbed her, and she was crying and she was really upset,
Speaker 2: and she called my dad. This was not a one off.
Speaker 2: My mom was robbed a lot. But the next week
Speaker 2: my mother got a shopping cart out again and she
Speaker 2: went right back to the grocery store. I admired her
Speaker 2: for it, but it made me angry. The neighborhood was
Speaker 2: filled with abandoned buildings and so much neglect. Our building
Speaker 2: was abandoned by the landlord when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: and the city took it over. Fires were set aimed
Speaker 2: at forcing us to move. Most winters, we went weeks
Speaker 2: without heat or hot water. Sometimes it was so cold
Speaker 2: we all had to sleep in the living room with
Speaker 2: a space heater and close off the rest of the apartment.
Speaker 2: But my mom was happy. I think she would say
Speaker 2: those were the best years of her life. We were
Speaker 2: all together.
Speaker 10: I feel there's a lot of her that I know,
Speaker 10: you know, and that I've experienced, and a lot of
Speaker 10: her that I don't like. I can see a lot
Speaker 10: of vibrants in her.
Speaker 2: My mother's world was the pocketbook factory, the beauty parlor,
Speaker 2: and then finally the insurance company she worked for in
Speaker 2: their mailroom. She felt like a big success coming to
Speaker 2: this country, and she always raised me to believe how
Speaker 2: lucky I was to be here. But that wasn't how
Speaker 2: I felt. So like my mom in the Dominican Republic,
Speaker 2: I dreamed of a way out, and that was something
Speaker 2: that really drove me in my life was figuring out
Speaker 2: how to get the heck out of there.
Speaker 11: I mean, I think they were both driven, you know,
Speaker 11: like you talk about wanting to leave one hundred and
Speaker 11: h Street, but like they were there because I believe
Speaker 11: to leftr like, so there's definitely like just a wanting
Speaker 11: to move up and out. I mean, did you guys
Speaker 11: not get along?
Speaker 2: I really didn't understand her. By the time I was sixteen,
Speaker 2: I felt that had grown past her in so many ways.
Speaker 2: I struggled to understand the lucky sprays, the candle lighting
Speaker 2: for saints, the hoarding, the confusion. The next photo we
Speaker 2: pull out of the bin is of my dad, my mom,
Speaker 2: and my sister. And this is a photo of their
Speaker 2: first Christmas with my sister Margie. It's an eight x
Speaker 2: ten black and white photo. There in front of the tree,
Speaker 2: all dressed up. My sister is sitting on my dad's
Speaker 2: lap and my mom is crouched behind them smiling. Margie
Speaker 2: has a smirk on her face.
Speaker 10: Oh, Margie's such a smash.
Speaker 2: Mommy, do you remember it was Margie's birthday last week? Mommy, Mommy,
Speaker 2: My big sister, Marjorie was killed in a car accident
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty eight, when she was twenty seven. She
Speaker 2: was engaged and on her way back from respeech in
Speaker 2: Brooklyn when a driver high on pill struck the car
Speaker 2: her fiance was driving. Margie and my mom were real close.
Speaker 2: She spent endless hours in the kitchen cooking with her,
Speaker 2: talking to her. They looked so much alike and seemed
Speaker 2: to have so much in common. I fell close to
Speaker 2: Margie too. She was my playmate, my friend, and always
Speaker 2: looked out for me. This is a really hard picture
Speaker 2: for me, Nola, because when Margie died, this was the
Speaker 2: photo that my mother was holding and running up and
Speaker 2: down the house screaming. If there was anything that changed
Speaker 2: my relationship with my mom, it was Margie's death. A
Speaker 2: few months after Margie died, I booked my mom and
Speaker 2: I a flight to Paris with a stop in Rome.
Speaker 2: I did it on a whim. It was a magical trip.
Speaker 2: We scratched Margie's name on every surface we could, saw
Speaker 2: every tourist site, walk too much, ate too much, and
Speaker 2: drank too much. At one point, we were climbing to
Speaker 2: the top of the Arc de Triomphe, and she just
Speaker 2: zoomed by me with this huge smile. In her face,
Speaker 2: and when we got to the top there was a
Speaker 2: gorgeous view of Paris. I looked over at her and
Speaker 2: at that moment, there was so much joy in her eyes,
Speaker 2: so much hope. Despite her pain. My mom was alive
Speaker 2: and living her life to the fullest. And I learned
Speaker 2: so much about strength just watching her survive the unthinkable,
Speaker 2: And for the first time in my life, I saw
Speaker 2: what we had in.
Speaker 3: Common, Mommy. I was thinking about our trip. Remember the
Speaker 3: trip we took the Dominican Republic. Remember that trip we took,
Speaker 3: all the fun we had.
Speaker 2: Do you remember? Twenty four years later, I took another
Speaker 2: life changing trip with my mom. It was twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: her eightieth birthday, and I decided to take her and
Speaker 2: my daughters Nola was fourteen and Margo eleven, to the
Speaker 2: Dominican Republic. I wanted them to experience where my mother
Speaker 2: had come from.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was fun.
Speaker 11: That was a trip for me.
Speaker 2: That trip was the first red flag that something was
Speaker 2: seriously wrong.
Speaker 5: I think that.
Speaker 10: Going to dr it was really clear because we saw
Speaker 10: Obbliet in the place that wasn't her house, and so
Speaker 10: like seeing her in comparison with like other hotel guests
Speaker 10: and like in an airport, Like I think it's a
Speaker 10: lot easier to be like, oh.
Speaker 5: She doesn't understand how to do things that she should
Speaker 5: know how to do.
Speaker 2: The trip started out uneventful. When we exited the plane,
Speaker 2: I grabbed Margo's hand and Nola held.
Speaker 10: My mom's, and she had some kind of like idea
Speaker 10: that we had to go down some like secret corner
Speaker 10: that was like not where anybody else was going.
Speaker 2: I heard you say we're Elita no, Ablita no, and
Speaker 2: then I was like, you know, Mommy.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I realized that like me, as the older sibling too,
Speaker 10: you know, would have to like kind of keep an
Speaker 10: eye on her, you know, and take care of her,
Speaker 10: make sure that she didn't run off.
Speaker 2: As we finally made it to the hotel, my mom
Speaker 2: morphed into a different person. I mean we all turned
Speaker 2: to her like, okay, Mommy, go for her. Check us in.
Speaker 10: We were just kind of expecting that, I'll believe it
Speaker 10: would be like our resident Spanish speaker, like we tell
Speaker 10: her what to say in the Englishman, you'd say it
Speaker 10: in Spanish.
Speaker 2: She spoke sis time.
Speaker 5: All the time.
Speaker 2: It was primarily oh.
Speaker 5: Spanish, you know, and if it was English.
Speaker 10: It was like English with like Spanish words kind of
Speaker 10: mixed in there.
Speaker 2: And this was like this still makes me laugh.
Speaker 10: I know it's not funny, besca. She turned to us
Speaker 10: like stone faced, and she.
Speaker 2: Was like, I do not speak Spanish. My husband's American
Speaker 2: husband is American.
Speaker 11: I do not speak Spanish.
Speaker 2: And we were like what I was in shock. I
Speaker 2: had no idea what my mother was doing. My dad
Speaker 2: had died in nineteen ninety seven, fifteen years before, and
Speaker 2: my mom's first language had always been Spanish, and suddenly
Speaker 2: she was refusing to speak it. It didn't make any sense.
Speaker 5: She was so distant in.
Speaker 10: A place that we really thought she was going to
Speaker 10: like come alive and be really excited.
Speaker 2: A few months after the trip to the Dominican Republic,
Speaker 2: we were joined by on Grace and her husband Paul
Speaker 2: for Thanksgiving, and Grace had noticed my mom had seemed
Speaker 2: off lately and confronted us both. My mother said everything
Speaker 2: was fine, and I chose to believe my mom.
Speaker 9: Your mother did not want to get old.
Speaker 4: That's another place she liked to stay the way she loved.
Speaker 9: She wanted to be young, she did not want to
Speaker 9: get old.
Speaker 2: But my mother was not okay.
Speaker 5: She stopped liking people.
Speaker 10: You know, she have friends, and then she didn't like
Speaker 10: them anymore. She got really reclusive, she got angrier.
Speaker 2: In December of twenty fifteen, I decided to go with
Speaker 2: my mom to see her doctor. He suggested cognitive testing
Speaker 2: and gave us a referral. Three months later, after a
Speaker 2: series of tests, we ended up in a neurologious, packed
Speaker 2: bronx waiting room filled with black and brown people. When
Speaker 2: it was finally our turn, we were told my mom
Speaker 2: had out Gheimer's disease. The doctor wrote down a few
Speaker 2: URLs and told me to google it. A life altering,
Speaker 2: life ending diagnosis was given to her in the same
Speaker 2: manner I was told. I was nearsighted. I grabbed my
Speaker 2: mother's hand as she stared blankly at the doctor. It
Speaker 2: was clear she was just a number to him, part
Speaker 2: of the statistic that shows a growing number of Latinos
Speaker 2: and African Americans stricken by this disease. I soon learned
Speaker 2: that African Americans are two times more likely and Latinos
Speaker 2: one and a half times more likely to develop Alzheimer's
Speaker 2: disease than white Americans. And so here is where my
Speaker 2: mom and I clashed again. She struggled to believe the
Speaker 2: diagnosis while I was researching the hell out of it
Speaker 2: and trying to form a fight plan.
Speaker 9: But your mother said to me, you know how Ivana,
Speaker 9: she's always torn. I said, your daughter talks a lot
Speaker 9: of stuff, but a lot of stuff is true because she.
Speaker 2: I was lost in my research and disgusted by what
Speaker 2: I found. All the issues that play communities of color
Speaker 2: converge in making Alzheimer's disease the last chapter of too
Speaker 2: many of our lives. Low socioeconomic status, high rates of
Speaker 2: cardiovascular disease, and a higher incidence of diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity,
Speaker 2: and depression are aggravating factors, even education factors. In Latinos
Speaker 2: also may develop symptoms at a younger age than non
Speaker 2: Latino whites, and the community is under resourced. Income, retirement
Speaker 2: and pension benefits are far too thin to get too
Speaker 2: many members of my community the help the resources it needs.
Speaker 2: I thought about my future. We it's going to be
Speaker 2: my end too, and I search for answers, anything to help.
Speaker 2: A few weeks after my mother received her dietnosis, hallucinations
Speaker 2: began to take over her world.
Speaker 10: She was seeing this boy like in her apartment. This
Speaker 10: like evil boy to me felt like big demon energy.
Speaker 2: By the summer of twenty sixteen, things spiraled out of control.
Speaker 2: My mother's behavior became more erratic, even dangerous, and at.
Speaker 10: One point it got so bad that she was hiding
Speaker 10: knives so that she could stab the boy. She needed
Speaker 10: an aid all the time because it just wasn't safe
Speaker 10: for her to be alone.
Speaker 2: Six months after getting her original diagnosis, I scrambled to
Speaker 2: get her into a clinical trial. Latinos make up just
Speaker 2: seven point five percent of research participants, and I read
Speaker 2: that clinical trials are key to finding ways to help
Speaker 2: not only my mom, but other Latinos caught in the
Speaker 2: web of this disease. Since my mother was presenting with
Speaker 2: psychotic tendencies, her new doctor suggests that this could help.
Speaker 2: Time demands were horrific. The driving her back and forth
Speaker 2: from the Bronx where she lived, to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital
Speaker 2: in Upper Manhattan, the waiting in the office, interviews with
Speaker 2: several doctors, the administration of the drug which she could
Speaker 2: not do herself. It was about six weeks of stress,
Speaker 2: and in the end she got the placebo. I was
Speaker 2: wrecked and like.
Speaker 10: Things just got harder, like we couldn't do Christmas the
Speaker 10: same way.
Speaker 2: I also discovered my mom had given away all her
Speaker 2: money to mail order psychics who promised her riches. She
Speaker 2: was always binge buying from catalogs, and.
Speaker 10: I feel like and it's because you like love her
Speaker 10: and like see the best in her and want her
Speaker 10: to be okay. But you always hope that it's going
Speaker 10: to get better, and instead it gets worse.
Speaker 2: And it did. The hallucinations of the boy and her
Speaker 2: apartment were joined by Ice agents, who she believed were
Speaker 2: coming to deport her, despite the fact that she was
Speaker 2: an American citizen. She would call me frantic that they
Speaker 2: were coming for her, begging me to help her. Things
Speaker 2: kept spiraling out of control until she ended up in
Speaker 2: the nursing home, the last thing I wanted to happen.
Speaker 2: And now my mom, who worked all her life, learned English,
Speaker 2: raised two daughters, and gave me the tools to succeed,
Speaker 2: her life has deteriorated.
Speaker 3: To this Mommy Ramona Ramonita Abita.
Speaker 4: Long deal.
Speaker 2: My mom's nursing home is big. It's residents are mostly
Speaker 2: black and Latino. Some strap boomboxes to their wheelchair so
Speaker 2: you often hear music like salsa or hip hop. The
Speaker 2: elevators are very slow and it's a bit run down.
Speaker 2: Before COVID they had started renovations, but it's a sad place,
Speaker 2: not a lot of smiles. Hello, Hi, Hi. When COVID
Speaker 2: first struck her nursing home, I took advantage of the
Speaker 2: skype calls they offered, Hi, Mommy, Hi, how are you.
Speaker 2: The first two or three I made, she seemed to
Speaker 2: know who I was by the end of the call,
Speaker 2: but the last few I had she had absolutely no
Speaker 2: idea patients, they have no recreational activity. They're isolated a lot. Iris,
Speaker 2: the nurse we heard from earlier, told me about the
Speaker 2: extreme lockdown measures in my mother's nursing home after the
Speaker 2: first case of COVID nineteen was discovered back in March.
Speaker 6: The little bit of stimulus they were able to absorb
Speaker 6: has disappeared.
Speaker 2: My mom did have a group of friends. She did
Speaker 2: art classes, played bingo, went to church and loved the
Speaker 2: music group where they would play Celia Cruz, Mark Anthony
Speaker 2: and Beyonce to the residents who would dance in their wheelchair.
Speaker 2: Now she's wheeled into the hallway and placed six feet
Speaker 2: away from her friends so they can look at each other.
Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of patients experience a tremendous decline.
Speaker 2: That's my mom. I last saw her five months ago
Speaker 2: and have no idea if or when I will see
Speaker 2: her again. I know there has been a lot of
Speaker 2: death in the nursing home, but I can't get a
Speaker 2: straight answer to how many residents have died. Sometimes I
Speaker 2: obsess over what's next, what will happen to her? What
Speaker 2: is the timeline? But there is none.
Speaker 6: It's a hard answer. I mean usually loss of functional status,
Speaker 6: the loss of the ability to speak, weight loss, loss
Speaker 6: of ability to feed yourself, more apathy. All of that
Speaker 6: points to worsening dementia, and dementia is a fatal illness.
Speaker 2: I have at this point on memories to get me through,
Speaker 2: like the last time she sang me Happy Birthday last
Speaker 2: year before she truly lost the ability to speak.
Speaker 5: The virus they told you stay they are evil, A
Speaker 5: pre virals stay, and.
Speaker 2: A little bit of Nola's wisdom.
Speaker 10: I don't expect anything from her. I can always just
Speaker 10: see that face value and be happy that they get
Speaker 10: to see her at all.
Speaker 2: Nola is so my mom's grandchild.
Speaker 11: I don't care.
Speaker 10: I don't care if she remembers me or not. If
Speaker 10: she knows my name like okay, And if she doesn't like,
Speaker 10: that's okay too.
Speaker 2: And so I asked her she could reach her just
Speaker 2: one more time. What she would want to talk to
Speaker 2: her about?
Speaker 10: Her hair is getting so long, and it's really solid,
Speaker 10: and it's really gorgeous. And I wish you could tell,
Speaker 10: like completely lucid Aqualita that her hair looks.
Speaker 2: Really nice and my mom's hair, for the first time
Speaker 2: in her life, is natural. I wish I could tell
Speaker 2: her about my daughter Margot's high school parking lot graduation.
Speaker 2: And I wish I could tell her that Nolah's doing
Speaker 2: great in college and in love. And I wish I
Speaker 2: could fill her in on all the gossip, tell her
Speaker 2: stories about my hectic job. And I wish that she
Speaker 2: would remember me, always remember me, her daughter, her only
Speaker 2: living daughter. Hi, Mommy, it's Yvonne Ybonne. Do eat her?
Speaker 2: It is, but she doesn't remember me anymore. So in
Speaker 2: the end, COVID nineteen did take my mom, not physically,
Speaker 2: but it took what was left of her essence. I
Speaker 2: love her, and I choose to hold her memories until
Speaker 2: I too Am just a memory.
Speaker 1: Our thanks to Yvonne Lattie for bringing us that story.
Speaker 1: Yvonne is a journalist who also teaches journalism at New
Speaker 1: York University. Alzheimer's In Color is a collaboration with Black
Speaker 1: Public Media with funding provided by.
Speaker 2: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Speaker 1: We want to thank Denise Green from BPM, Jason Risendez,
Speaker 1: the organization Latinos Against Alzheimer's, and Janelle Pifer. If you
Speaker 1: need help or supportavocating Alzheimer's disease, contact the Alzheimer's Association
Speaker 1: at alz dot org. This episode was edited by Luis
Speaker 1: Trees and mixed by Stephane Lebou. The Latino USA team
Speaker 1: also includes Andrea Lopez Cruzado, Marta Martinez, Mike Sargent, Daisy Condreds,
Speaker 1: Victoria Strada, Brinando Leanos Junior, Patrisa Subran, and Elizabeth Loenthal Torres.
Speaker 1: Our editorial director is Fernandes Santos. Our senior engineer is
Speaker 1: Julia Caruso. Our associate engineers are Gabriel Levayez and jj Carubin.
Speaker 1: Our marketing manager is Luis Luna. Our theme music was
Speaker 1: composed by Sea Rubinos, I'm your host and executive producer
Speaker 1: Mariango Hosa join us again on our next episode. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, remember not te Vayas e astor Approxima Cchoo.
Speaker 10: Funding for Latino USA is coverage of a culture of
Speaker 10: health is made possible in part by a grant from
Speaker 10: the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Latino USA is made possible
Speaker 10: in part by New York Women's Foundation, The New York
Speaker 10: Women's Foundation funding women leaders that build solutions in their
Speaker 10: communities and celebrating thirty years of radical generosity, and the
Speaker 10: Heising Simons Foundation Unlocking knowledge, opportunity, and possibilities.
Speaker 2: More at hsfoundation dot org