DIANE MAKAR MURPHY Mom's battle with palsy elicits admiration

"Sweet dreams," my mother said in her garbled speech. "I love you."
They were the only words I had understood in our entire telephone conversation.
The rest were hard to catch, slurred and bumpy, sporadic and forced between difficult breaths. The positive effects of her speech therapy had faded away. But I knew, words of the heart, spoken or not, are often clear. It had not always been so; but it is increasingly so.
Sometimes she embarrasses me in saying, "Why are you so good to me?" And I, who visits barely twice a month, who does little more than wheel her to stores or sit on her couch and hold her (occasionally emptying a waste basket or cleaning a coffeemaker), am ashamed at just how little I do. (My sister, who has been there through thick and thin is much more worthy of admiration. And my father, well, his stamina is unfathomable.)
Disease: To those who didn't read my earlier column on the subject, they call my mother's malady PSP, which in its simplicity sounds like a technological innovation -- at very least, more like a cure than a disease. "Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you PSP, the best thing since snake oil, able to jump start your heart, invigorate your digestive system and cleanse your bowels. Check with your doctor before trying any new medication. ..."
Or perhaps a corporation with stockholders and old balding men who sit around boardroom tables. Like PSP Inc.
But it is not so simple as that, for in those three important letters rest my mother's future.
PSP is progressive supranuclear palsy, which really is probably more vague than its acronym. No more than 3,000 others in our country can claim to have it, at least not diagnosed -- so it's no wonder it conjures up no image.
Of late, actor Dudley Moore, who suffers from PSP, has placed the malady before the public eye.
Diagnosis: From the start, when the disease took my mom's balance, it confused her and her doctors. They misdiagnosed her as having Parkinson's disease.
I remember, when they finally gave it a label, going online and trying to find out more about it. When I discovered the bleak prognosis and debilitating progression of PSP, I started to hunt other diseases with similar symptoms -- searching for something curable. I had no success. With PSP, the simple act of being dizzy unravels you from the start; your humanity is in some ways taken from you. PSP sufferers find they can't walk without a railing or walker.
Family members soon take away the car keys.
And then even the patient's walker becomes too burdensome and legs are, for the most part, given up for wheels.
PSP thrusts other silly things upon its victims. Shaky eyes and shaky hands wreaked havoc with my mom's day-to-day activities.
At meals, food fell around her, and so she shoveled it, in mighty spoonfuls, before it could escape. She began to choke through large mouthfuls. And people yelled at her. So that, slowly, she lost most of her dinner companions, who could not understand the grace she showed in gracelessness.
And then she found the bathroom inconvenient, and another step along her path was made.
Admiration: I continue to watch her on this journey, a journey she did not choose, and I realize how much I admire her -- how much of her I never knew before.
One tribe of American Indians says old people lose their memories in preparation. As babies make their entrance with pristine brains, the elderly leave their memories behind, becoming childlike in their skills and in their minds, as they prepare for their exit.
This is a journey we and our loved ones all will make in some way, to some degree or other. It's often difficult to see the virtue in it, but to my surprise I have found much more to admire than to pity.
murphy@vindy.com