Winter 2008

 

 

Wife of alumnus hopes fund speeds Alzheimer’s discoveries

John R. McKenzie, MD ’55, and Marilyn McKenzie

“I can’t even begin to describe how it feels to watch my doctor husband not know how to brush his teeth or where the bathroom is, to watch him talk to his grandchildren and not be able to say what he wants to say,” said Marilyn, wife of John R. McKenzie, MD ’55. “It’s just like a cloud comes over him. It used to be that the cloud would go, and he would be back, rational. But now, it’s just taken everything away.”

John and Marilyn recently established the John R. McKenzie, MD Endowed Fund for Alzheimer’s Research through a $100,000 IRA rollover gift to the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Dr. McKenzie spent his younger years in his hometown of Helena, Mont., where he and Marilyn met. He served two years in the U.S. Marine Corps before becoming a pre-med student in Helena. After graduating from Marquette University School of Medicine (the Medical College’s predecessor), then doing an internship in Milwaukee, he and Marilyn moved to Rice Lake, Wis., where he was a general practitioner for six years. In 1962, he signed on at Milwaukee County Hospital as a resident in radiology. He became a board certified radiologist in 1966.

Dr. McKenzie and Marilyn have eight children, 25 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. The couple currently resides in Oshkosh. One winter day four years ago, they were driving home when Dr. McKenzie asked Marilyn where she keeps her car.

“The more we talked, I thought, ‘He doesn’t know who I am,’” she said.

And so it began – Dr. McKenzie’s life as a diagnosed Alzheimer’s patient. Because Alzheimer’s first affects areas of the brain involved in learning and memory, Marilyn worried her husband would one day not be able to find his way home. She has not left his side since that day.

“I see that it bothers his individualism,” she said. “This is the cruelest disease I have ever experienced.”

To give To contribute to the John R. McKenzie, MD Endowed Fund for Alzheimer’s Research or to establish a planned gift, contact Jonathan Kowalski at  (414) 456-5824 or jvkowals@mcw.edu. Information on giving.

Income from the endowment is to advance research in prevention and early detection of Alzheimer’s disease through the work of Diana Kerwin, MD ’96, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Geriatrics/Gerontology) at the College.

“With our large family, it’s almost a given that somebody is going to inherit it,” Marilyn said.

It was the McKenzies’ son, Patrick McKenzie, MD ’83, an orthopaedic surgeon in Green Bay, who referred his parents to Dr. Kerwin for treatment. Dr. Kerwin is Director of the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin Geriatric Memory Disorders Clinic and a nationally recognized physician-researcher.

“When Alzheimer’s is detected early, a treatment plan can be developed to provide patients with more independence throughout the stages of dementia and reduce burdens on the patient and family,” she said.

Current medications work throughout the stages of the disease to slow the memory loss as well as reduce some of the behaviors of agitation, anxiety and frustration, experienced by those with Alzheimer’s.

“Early detection can also benefit the patient if there is any reversible or contributing medical conditions that are affecting memory and mimic dementia such as depression, hypothyroidism, vitamin B12 deficiency, infections, medications, stroke, normal pressure hydrocephalus or structural brain disease,” Dr. Kerwin said.

“I can’t tell you how totally frustrated I am with the lack of effort for awareness in Alzheimer’s disease fundraising,” Marilyn said. “Awareness brings money, and money brings cures. If it’s money that [researchers] need, you know, that’s what drew us to the cause.”

Marilyn said she would like to get the word out that theirs is a fund to which others can add, either by way of gifts or bequests. “In fact, our daughter already has added to it,” she said.