She'd just dozed off when the phone rang at her bedside. It was around 11 p.m. Of course, as was so often the case at this hour, it was Beverly Tomao's mother. She was crying.
"I hate to bother you," Beverly's mother said. "But he wants to go out again. I've already driven him twice tonight. I'm so tired."She was speaking about Beverly's father, who was 73. His Alzheimer's had been diagnosed several years before. Beverly's parents lived in the upstairs apartment of her New England home.
She went up in her nightgown. Her father was in his pajamas, standing anxiously at the door.
"What's the matter, Dad?" she asked. "Why don't we sit down and talk? Let's find out what's wrong."
"You people don't understand," he said. "I have to go home now. My mother's waiting for me."
It was obvious this was a night he didn't recognize her. She knew there was no gain in trying to reason with him. They'd been through this before.
"OK, Dad," said Beverly. "I'll take you home."
Back downstairs, her husband was awake in bed.
"David," she said, "I have to take Dad."
"I don't want you going alone at this hour," he said, and began to get dressed, too.
Together, they went back upstairs. Her father was getting frantic.
"Let's go," he said.
The first sign of the illness was five years before, at age 68, when he began to lose things - keys, checks, papers. At first they figured it was from overwork. But then, one morning, he awoke without remembering what he did for a living. They thought it was a stroke. At the hospital, at the end of a long day of testing, the doctors told them it was not.
It got worse with the passing of the months. The family tried an adult day-care center for those with similar problems, but in time he became even incapable of that. The nights were the hardest. He would go to sleep, then rise five minutes later, going through drawers, taking clothes from closets, finally developing a fixation to go home, to the house he'd grown up in, a house he hadn't lived in for decades.
"My mother's waiting for me," he would say, although his mother had died 20 years before. "I have to go. I have to."
The three of them got into her `81 Cutlass, and her father, wearing a suit jacket over his pajamas, began to navigate - onto the highway, then off, a right and a left and finally, to the address of the old house.
They parked the car. Beverly watched as the confusion came over his face. The house was no longer there. It was now a big brick school.
Then they drove home. The next night, they would have to do it again.
In time, things worsened. He began to get so desperate to go home he would physically shove aside those he loved. At last, with the coaxing of their doctor, they realized the family was becoming unable to cope. They made a difficult choice: They managed to find a space for him in the state's only Alzheimer's care ward.
As a newcomer to this syndrome, she was surprised to find how little help there is for those who must cope with a family victim.
Very few nursing homes in the country have separate units for Alzheimer's sufferers. Very few state hospitals have wards.
And for those who strive to take care of their loved ones at home? Only one state, Virginia, now offers stipends to help out.
Beverly asks that legislatures throughout the country think hard about taking Virginia's lead. She asks that more nursing homes realize the importance of having separate Alzheimer's units. She asks us all to realize that each week, this problem is touching more of us, and more of us, and more of us.