Remember me? Does the vaccine induce Alzheimer's disease?

I drove 17 hours to see someone before they forget who I am. I made it.

“Don’t simply dismiss a coincidence and let it drift away. Life is totally interconnected. These unusual things are simply connections that surprise you because you aren’t used to seeing life except in fragments. Now it is beginning to piece itself together.”—Deepak Chopra

I’m at a gas station just outside of Berkeley California filling up my car. It is Sunday November 13th and the time is around 12:15pm. It took me 17 hours to get here and in another 10 minutes I will be standing at my cousins’ door. I am here at her request. Will she know who I am? If she recognizes my face will she know my name?  It is her wish to see me one last time before she can no longer remember me. My cousin is 72, ten years older than me.

While I am filling up my car I check my email and this is at the top.

Link to source.

For me, this is typical, an interactive play with universe. On the morning of November 10th I awoke and a voice or thought sprang into my head, JUST DRIVE DOWN THERE. I didn’t think twice about it. I informed my wife we’re going to California ASAP. We’d leave on the following day, the 11th. The eleventh is Veteran’s day. It is also the anniversary of my dad’s passing, 11/11/11. I’m traveling to meet someone who greatly admires him.

The last time I seen my cousin was in 1979. A picture was taken of us and I have it somewhere on my computer but I can’t find it. I know I have it because I cropped myself out of it. I did that because it is the only picture taken of me from the ages of 17-20.

I was living on my own at the time and I wasn’t much into photography nor were any of my friends. I used it on my Facebook for a while. Now I use my dad’s face. There’s a connection here. Mark it.

My cousin and my aunt had driven up from California to see my dad. I wasn’t informed, but I wasn’t the easiest guy to reach back then either, but for some reason I am there. I was sitting on my dad’s couch while my dad and his sister talked. My cousin was taking a shower. She comes out wrapped in a just a towel, walks over, and sits on the couch next to me. We are pressed together, her leg touching mine. I look at her and smile. My thoughts, hippie chick from California, probably a nudist too. She’s gorgeous. I think both assumptions were correct.

I text my cousin from the gas station to inform her I’ll be there in a few minutes. My wife is with me. She doesn’t know my wife and believes I’m making the trip alone. Her husband answers the door and greets us warmly and invites us in. My cousin then comes down the hallway wrapped in a towel. She just got out of the shower. Typical. I should have easily predicted this. I grab her and hug her. She knows who I am, knows my name. My wife pointed out we have the exact same eyes.

She informs me that she had to see me. She had to see my face before her illness takes it away. Since she was diagnosed, she has trouble with technology such as her phone. She finds it confusing to text. She’s never been on Facebook, but a friend of hers in New York helped her track me down and mailed my cousin a picture of me. She planned on showing me as soon as I got there, but when she saw my wife she hid the picture in a drawer. In the picture that was sent to her I’m with another woman. She thinks perhaps a girlfriend that my wife doesn’t know about.

While conversing over a glass of wine she made a confusing comment to my wife, something like, you know if Mike was with another woman she didn’t mean anything to him. I would later learn why she said that.

I was amazed at my cousins house. It is up on a hill overlooking Berkeley. San Francisco is directly across.

 A million-dollar view.

As I toured her garden It felt eerily similar to my own, at least the artwork she displayed in it. Her personality comes through it. She displays rusted out tools as I do. My cousin has done very well in real estate and owns multiple homes in California and Oregon.

She was sitting outside having a glass of wine with my wife while I talked to her husband. His band members showed up for a rehearsal, so I went outside to chat with my cousin and my wife. She told me I should go get a beer in the fridge. Then she said, she’d go get it. I suggested we all go together. As she walked up the stairs she moved like a cat. She’s perfectly fit. I thought, how long before she forgets how to go up a flight of stairs.

My cousin and I were both born in the Bay area—Richmond California. Richmond is famous for the Victory ships.

These ships are a manufacturing miracle. They built an entire ship in a day. A total of 531 were built. Most of the laborers were women—Rosie the Riveter, Wendy the Welder. My cousin’s husband volunteers once a week to work on the ship shown. He maintains the communications from the deck to all floors and all cabins. He’s a genius.

Richmond is also famous for producing one of the greatest rock stars, Janis Joplin. Many people think Janis started in San Francisco, but that’s not true. My cousin knew her. They hung out together. She told me she once shared a bottle of Southern Comfort with Janis.

 She said Janis first started out in a Jazz band and her vocals blew everyone away. Some hated her vocals. They thought she was too screechy. Her husband knew Janis too and confirmed the story. She said she knew Sam Andrews as well from Big Brother and the Holding Co. I told her I’m connected to Sam Andrews, and told her the story. I won’t go into that story here.

Another famous rock band they knew was Creedence Clearwater Revival. My favorite band as a kid. I posted an article where I took a song Creedence did as my title, Ninety-Nine and half subscribers just won’t do.

Ninety-Nine and a half subscribers just won't do

My cousins husband told me he went to High School with John Fogerty. I asked him why he talks with a Cajun accent when he was born in the bay area. He said because the born on the bayou accent has made him a lot of money, so he just kept it. Money changes people. He told me all kinds of cool Creedence stories. My cousin chimed in too. She has a degree in psychology and worked as a juvenile councilor for 30 years. She said one time some of the kids that she was working with broke into a building where Creedence used to rehearse and stole their guitars. In court she told the judge to throw the book at them. He did. He must have been a Creedence fan. She never found out what happened to the guitars.

Throughout our discussions my cousin kept discreetly referencing the picture she hid in the drawer. The one with my face. Later on in the evening my wife and her husband were over at the stereo discussing which music to play next when my cousin felt brave enough to retrieve the picture. It took her about four attempts. She kept stopping thinking my wife would look over. She get’s the picture and races back to me. “Here it is Mike. I had to hide it because you are with another woman, probably a girlfriend and I don’t want to upset your wife.” She showed me the picture and I erupt in laughter. She looks confused. “Sherry, that’s my daughter.” My cousin then joins me in laughter. She couldn’t grasp the idea that I had a 35-year-old daughter. My wife and her husband both had a great laugh over it as well.

The reason my cousin seemed to be so infatuated with my face wasn’t because of me. It was my dad. She greatly admired her uncle. She said he was the nicest, smartest man she ever met and she loved him dearly and I looked just like him. Sometimes in our conversation she would say, “Mike, I just want to stare at your face.” She told me stories about their relationship that remain permanently etched in her mind, for a while anyway. She told me when she was a little girl she had to walk to school for the first time because nobody was available to take her. She was frightened. She said my dad told her he would take her but couldn’t get off work. He told her to follow the yellow line from her doorstep to her school. When she walked out the door the next morning there was the yellow line. The night before my dad took a piece of yellow chalk and marked the sidewalk all the way from her front door to the school. She cried as she told the story. She said, “Who does that Mike. Who?”

She told another story about my dad. She said there was this biker group that would all meet up to do hill climbs with their BSA motorcycles. She said one day my dad invited her to go along. She guessed she was around eight. She said they showed up and here was these biker dudes and my dad shows up with a little girl on the back of his bike. She said he didn’t care what they thought. She told me he asked her if she wanted to ride on the back while he attempted to climb the hill. She said yes. She said she hung on for dear life and they made it to the top. What a thrill for her. The two above stories she would repeat many times forgetting that she already told me. Before leaving her and I joked about renting a bike, me on the front, and her on the back and go see if I can get her to the top of the hill. We both agreed we would make it.

At some point in the evening my cousin joined the band on drums. She knows how to play. She later gave me a lesson. I sucked.

Her husband is on the big bass guitar thing. He’s also a master on the guitar and plays the piano too. The old guy playing the guitar played with Jerry Lee Lewis. He told me several funny stories about Jerry. He wasn’t overly impressed with him. The piano in front of my cousin on drums was her high school boyfriends. He was a concert pianist. He recorded several albums and even toured with several rock bands in the sixties. He got ill and my cousin moved in with him for a year and cared for him until he died. Who does that? When he died, he left her his house, truck and his piano.

My intentions were to visit my cousin for an hour or two and do a turn and burn and head right back up the coast. I didn’t know what condition she’d be in and I kind of invited myself down because I couldn’t reach her. She wouldn’t allow it. She wanted me to move in, or buy the house across the street. We stayed the night and left around 10:30 the next morning with plans to stay in touch.

Is one of the adverse reactions to the vaccine that it can induce Alzheimer’s disease? My cousins mom died from Alzheimer’s as did our grandmother. My cousin said she knew she would get it but didn’t think it would come this early. Maybe I can get the Midwestern Doctor to comment on it.

Before I left I looked through her books.