Local Geriatric’s Mind Frays in Dementia’s Downward Spiral

Tragedy in slow motion as a pensioner loses his grip on reality. Family and friends watch in impotent horror.

Donald J. Trump, dementia patient, in hospice.

Perhaps no disease ravages its victims quite like dementia. It does not kill directly. Rather, it gradually snuffs out the spark of human intellect that distinguishes man as sentient, rendering men and women blubbering vegetables. The descent into darkness is achingly slow. It begins with the occasional false claim made over dinner, as the fog encroaches. It concludes with the severance of all ties to cogent thought, and frequent panics as paranoia crowds out all other emotions. The body betrays itself. Initially, tools like forks or umbrellas become unrecognizable or difficult to utilize. In time, even the commode becomes a severe challenge. By the final months, all that remains of the victim’s decades of productive adulthood is a life of bedpans, minders, and confused anguish in the encroaching darkness.

In the early stages of his disease, Mr. Trump forgets how to use an umbrella, then forgets that it exists at all.

Such is the case of local New York City landlord Donald J. Trump, who at this very moment, struggles with the disease. What makes this patient special, is that his doctors and family have allowed him to retain his smartphone, which he uses to post to Twitter when he wakes up, afraid and alone in the early morning hours.

Inventing accomplishments, no matter how ridiculous, can give a dementia patient a feeling of comfort and achievement.

“We don’t have the heart to tell him there’s no wall with Mexico,” said Mr. Trump’s ashen son in law Jared Kushner, a claims adjuster for GEICO. “He just keeps insisting that he built a wall with Mexico, and it seems like a harmless thing to insist on, so we let him say it, even though it’s obviously not true. He was always stubborn, but because now he can’t understand what anyone says, he’s impossible to contradict without a huge argument. Why would he even want to build a wall with Mexico? He’s never even been to Mexico.”

In the early days of the disease, victims of dementia can cover for their forgetfulness by claiming odd decisions, like in this case when Mr. Trump claims he meant to sign a contract in another room, not just wander off and forget to sign it.

Mr. Trump, in a moment of total fog, wanders off a plane and onto the airport tarmac, before minders usher him back to his waiting taxi.

Mr. Trump forgets that his wife is standing beside him, inventing a story in a classic case of confabulation.

Fantasies are a frequent defense mechanism when faced with the horrors inflicted by dementia.

“We don’t argue with him anymore when he forgets our names, or says things like ‘I’m a billionaire’ or ‘I had the best TV show ever,’” said daughter and part-time beautician Ivanka, as she held her father’s tiny, frail, liver-spotted hand during one of his daily sponge baths. “If my father wants to live in a fantasy land, it’s better than the Hell that is his daily reality.”

A lack of awareness of one’s surroundings is often linked with the early signs of dementia. Here, Mr. Trump wanders onto an airplane, waving at no one in particular, with toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

Mr. Trump’s psychological implosion is being studied, in exchange for treatment which his family could not otherwise afford, by Columbia University physician Dr. Joshua Morgenstern, at the Paul Manafort Center for Geriatric Mental Deterioration.

“Mr. Trump’s bouts of paranoia and loss of basic language skills are perfectly in keeping with the expected symptoms in the medical literature,” said Dr. Morgenstern. “What is interesting to us is the window Mr. Trump’s sad, embarrassing Tweets give us,” he continued. “Most impulsive statements dementia patients make simply fade into the ether. In Twitter we can observe his mental unraveling in real time, and study it once the patient is deceased. What usually gets documented the most are the more extreme examples of behavior, like Mr. Trump’s frequent, Alzheimer’s-induced wanderings.”

Loss of language function is frequently associated with the brain’s deterioration.

In an early sign of dementia, Mr. Trump forgets where he is, substituting a Freudian slip.

As the disease progresses, Mr. Trump wanders outside some bulletproof glass, clapping for himself as a band plays Oseh Shalom.

In a pernicious sign of the disease, Mr. Trump forgets to sign a contract, after extolling it at length.

In a socially awkward consequence of his dementia, Mr. Trump wanders away from a family reunion, mid-conversation.

As his mental clarity diminishes, Mr. Trump wanders away from a business meeting, ushered back in by his minders.

Even old friends are not spared by the memory-scrambling effects of dementia.

On a Thursday in November, when the trees at nearby High Bridge Park were fully denuded, Mr. Trump’s old golfing buddies, Long Island building contractor Bruce Ohr and Mark Fisher Hell’s Kitchen personal trainer Mike Pence came to visit. Mr. Trump insisted on wearing his ill-fitting golfing polo. Clutching his nine-iron, he appeared to believe the three were awaiting his ex-wife for a weekend tee time.

“I can’t bear to watch it,” said a tearful Mike Pence, his mascara running down his cheeks. “To see a man you love in such pain, unaware of the greater pain he cannot yet comprehend, it’s enough to make you believe there is no God.”

In a brief moment of clarity, Mr. Trump looked at his family and friends with a familiar sparkle in his eyes, speaking in complete sentences for the first time in years.

“My God. Ivanka. I’ve had the most terrible dream. I was President of the United States,” he said. “But it wasn’t a dream. It was a place! And you and you and you and you were there! But you couldn’t have been, could you? This was a real truly live place! And I remember that some of it wasn’t very nice. But most of it was beautiful! But just the same all I kept saying to everybody was I want to go home,” he continued.

“And they sent me home!” he shouted, as he was once again overcome by his demons.

Here’s my Twitter, and my website. Be good to each other.