The first came when she concluded she could no longer stay on the court. If he did wander off, it would be harmless, because there always would be a guard nearby.”įor Justice O’Connor, there were two tipping points in her husband’s Alzheimer’s journey. She would do her work and he just sat there and looked through the newspaper. “He would come and sit in her big office,” Jay explained. The O’Connors then sold their home and moved to a condominium “so someone would be at the front desk,” Jay O’Connor told me, “to look out for my dad and make sure if he starts to wander out of the building, they could grab him.”ĭuring certain hours of the day when his father wasn’t in his care program, Jay said, his mom would bring him to her spacious chambers at the Supreme Court. And by 2000, Thomas reports, O’Connor went to Georgetown Hospital to see a neurologist, without telling his wife, and got the official word that he had Alzheimer’s.”Īs O’Connor’s condition worsened over the next few years, Thomas writes, his neurologist told his wife that her husband was “having trouble writing down his thoughts. “Linda Neary, his secretary, began wondering why he was asking her to copy the same documents twice, “ Thomas writes. law firm, the early signs of memory loss didn’t escape the people who saw him every day. What she couldn’t have known as she spoke those words was that she would soon be among those statistics.Ĭaregiver for Husband John O'Connor With Alzheimer'sįor John O’Connor, a partner at a prestigious Washington, D.C. And without some basic action in this country, ultimately one in two people over 80 are going to have this disease. The day that report was released, 10 years ago this month, O’Connor issued this warning in Congressional testimony: “Our study shows that in the next 20 years, the numbers of people with Alzheimer’s will increase more than 50%.
The unforgiving demands of caring for a husband who diminishes by the day would inform O’Connor’s service as honorary chair of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and on the Alzheimer’s Study Group (ASG), the 2009 nonpartisan panel that developed a national plan to combat what the report said “poses a grave and growing challenge to our nation.”
O'Connor and the National Alzheimer's Report
O'Connor told Thomas that her decision to retire from the Supreme Court, largely to focus on her husband’s needs, was "the biggest mistake, the dumbest thing I ever did." What O’Connor chose not to reference in her letter were her years as an Alzheimer’s caregiver for her beloved husband, where she had a front row seat to a progressive disease with no cure. “We knew at some point it would become known that she was suffering from dementia and it seemed like a good idea to get ahead of this so some good can come out of this,” Jay O’Connor told me. As this condition has progressed, I am no longer able to participate in public life.”įor her family, it was never a question of whether to go public. She wrote: “Some time ago, doctors diagnosed me with the beginning stages of dementia, probably Alzheimer’s disease.
O’Connor disclosed her diagnosis last October in an open letter to friends and her fellow Americans years after she got the news. How Sandra Day O'Connor Disclosed Her Dementia Diagnosis
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