Husband. Father. Respected businessman. But something's wrong with Mike Mahoney. Terribly wrong.
By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN
Published April 11, 2004
[Times photos: John Pendygraft]
For 12 years, Mike Mahoney was the voice of TECO Energy Inc. Now he rocks in his favorite chair for much of the day, every day.
Mike Mahoney kisses his wife, Mary, after dinner recently. Mary and other members of the family say he is lost to them.
Once fastidious in his appearance, Mahoney carried hair spray and a razor in his briefcase. Now his teeth are chipped or gone from chewing things he shouldn’t.
TAMPA - Mary Mahoney remembers when her husband stopped brewing her tea.
That day in late 1998, he didn't warm a mug of water in the microwave. He didn't gently dip the Lipton tea bag into the water. He didn't add a few teaspoons of sugar or a splash of milk.
He didn't bring it to her.
"I guess the honeymoon is over," she thought to herself.
They had been married 25 years.
One of Mike's cousins had introduced them. Mary was 20, Mike 21. He had a huge ego and loved to brag. She told him he was full of himself, and he liked that about her.
She remembers the day she fell in love - April 2, 1972 - watching the sun set from a lifeguard stand at Tampa's Ben T. Davis Municipal Beach. For years, they returned on April 2, or on their wedding anniversary.
They lived in a three-bedroom house with a pool in New Tampa's Pebble Creek subdivision with their two sons, Matt and Mike Jr. Eventually, Mary quit her nursing job to stay home and raise the boys.
In his spare time, Mary's husband bowled, golfed and watched jai alai matches. He loved to sing karaoke. He took the boys to Saturday movie matinees when they were young.
From the moment Mike and Mary met, they had chemistry. It was the type that made them love and fight with passion; there was never middle ground.
Each thought they had met their match. She saw right through him and told him so. A master spinner, he'd talk his way out of any situation, like when he forgot to take out the trash. That was her Mike.
In 1999, when Mike was 48, subtle changes appeared in his personality. To Mary, he seemed apathetic. Once known for meticulous balancing of the checkbook, he started bouncing checks. He paid some bills three times, others not at all.
And he stopped brewing tea for his wife. He had always been a caring person who rubbed her temples when she complained of headaches, brought on by the stress of her nursing job. Now, he would stare at her and walk away.
* * *
At work, he was Iron Mike. As the voice of TECO Energy Inc., he presided over news conferences with authority and wit. Respected among peers, he was named president of the local chapter of the Public Relations Society of America.
He wore a suit and tie or a sports jacket to work each day. Fastidious, he kept hair spray and a razor in his briefcase, had his hair trimmed once a month and avoided chores such as gardening because he hated to dirty his hands.
But like Mary, his co-workers began seeing an odd side to Iron Mike. He would discuss strategy with his bosses but handle crises his way. He was disruptive during meetings, getting up repeatedly to fill his coffee cup. He'd fill and drink 20 cups during a single meeting, and his legs would shake uncontrollably.
People assumed he suffered from depression; he was approaching 50. A close friend, TECO chairman Tim Guzzle, had died a year earlier. And the Tampa Jai-Alai fronton, a favorite haunt, had shut down.
His bosses sent him to the employee assistance program. A psychologist referred him to a psychiatrist, the first of two Mike would see. The first 18 months, he was treated with drugs for depression and bipolar disorder, but his condition didn't improve.
In April 2000, TECO let him go.
Mary urged her husband to find another job. She'd scour for leads and tell him to write a cover letter and submit his resume.
Okay, okay, he'd tell her. But he couldn't seem to do it.
"What is wrong with you?" Mary would scream at him. "Don't you care? Are you just going to let our family fall apart?"
He sat down and typed a cover letter. When Mary read it, she was stunned. It was full of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes, as if written by a second-grader.
She thought he had been sloppy on purpose because he didn't want to work. It was something else for them to fight about.
* * *
Before long, Mike's actions made even less sense. Many nights, he would wake at 3 a.m. and put on his suit and tie. When Mary asked what he was doing, he would reply that TECO needed him.
On weekends, he would go with her to give medicine to an elderly relative. Within five minutes of returning, Mike would forget they had gone. He would tell Mary to get her purse, urging, "Let's go." At times, he would try to put shoes on her. For hours, he stood at the door.
People urged Mary to leave Mike, and she gave it serious thought. She knew he was lying to his psychiatrist about life at home. Mike would tell him it was terrific.
She bought a set of luggage and dreamed of walking away. Some days, she daydreamed for hours about a new life.
But she couldn't go. She couldn't leave her sons to deal with their father, and deep down, she suspected Mike's behavior was out of his control.
On Mike's 50th birthday, in February 2001, the family went to his favorite restaurant, the Wine Cellar in North Redington Beach.
With the Mahoneys together at a special place, Mary had high hopes that her husband might snap out of his depression.
But before dinner arrived, Mike harassed a stranger, thinking she was his cousin, Maryanne. He asked her why she was with another man. He quizzed her until Mary pulled him away.
Mortified, Mary went to the bathroom and cried. Her daughter-in-law, Krystal, patted her back and tried to console her.
"There's something wrong with him," she told Mary. "Mike's not normal."
They returned to their seats to find their steaks had arrived. Mike, who was known for his impeccable manners, cut his filet mignon in half and stuffed one of the pieces in his mouth, then the other.
Everyone at the table gasped. "What is the matter with you?" Mary asked him.
Mike got up and went to the bathroom to spit it out.
When he returned to his seat, he began pestering the waiter for dessert, even as the rest of his party tried to finish their meals.
They were quiet. Mary's steak went down like a lump in her throat.
* * *
By then, Mary suspected something organic was wrong. Deep down, she hoped it was depression. They could deal with it and live with it.
But at a grandson's spring program several weeks later, again Mike stunned his wife. While the children sang songs, Mike joined in, at the top of his lungs.
Jesus Loves the Little Children. Ring Around the Rosie. Jesus Loves Me.
People shot him looks and shushed him. But he wouldn't stop. He finally got up to go to the bathroom.
"Is he retarded or what?" a woman asked Mary.
* * *
Was it depression? Was it early onset of Alzheimer's? Was it mad cow disease? All had been suspected. But his deteriorating behavior finally changed the way doctors looked at Mike and marked a turning point in his treatment. They performed a CAT scan and an MRI. Doctors discovered his brain had shrunk, and tests showed his IQ had dipped dramatically. He could no longer think abstractly.
"We knew something was wrong in his brain," Mary said. "They just weren't sure what it was."
Nine months after the birthday dinner, a neurologist broached the subject of Pick's disease.
Mary had never heard of it.
She ran across a site on the Internet about Pick's. There was a checklist of about 25 signs, and Mike exhibited nearly all of them.
During his brother's wake the next year, Mike spent the service desperately trying to get someone to buy him a Coke.
While everyone hugged, cried, whispered their condolences, Mike just wanted a Coke. He bummed 50 cents off a stranger, and Mary finally relented and gave him change. He had found a soda machine in the funeral home's employee break room.
He guzzled it down.
* * *
In June 2002, five months after the funeral, he was diagnosed with Pick's disease.
The disease, progressive and irreversible, causes personality changes and a gradual deterioration of social skills, along with impairment of intellect, memory and language skills. It causes the frontal lobe to shrink in size.
The first sign being behavioral problems, Pick's usually hits people in their 40s, 50s and early 60s, said Helen-Ann Comstock, founder of the Association for Frontotemporal Dementias. Her husband died of Pick's.
"Many are at the height of their careers," she said. "They are exhibiting tremendously poor judgment, and people don't realize it's because of the illness."
Researchers are only beginning to understand the disorder, said Virginia M-Y Lee, a professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
"If you had Pick's disease 30 years ago, most likely you would have been diagnosed with Alzheimer's," she said.
It is unclear how many Americans are afflicted by the disease. Scientists estimate that one-fourth of Pick's cases are genetic. People with Pick's usually die within 10 years of onset, often from an infection such as pneumonia.
"Your life is just completely ruined," Mary Mahoney said. "Each day is always worse than the day before, in some way. There's just no hope out there."
And little help.
As Mary took on a greater role in her husband's care, she soon felt overwhelmed.
Again, people urged her to abandon him, to make him a ward of the state. But she had taken a vow to stick by Mike in sickness and in health.
She called around looking for help from adult day care centers, but no one would take Mike. People feared he would be hard to handle, as a relatively young man.
That was before his weight withered from 185 pounds to less than 150, and before he lost 2 inches from his 5-foot-10 frame.
Mike was a handful.
He had lost the ability to perform everyday tasks. He'd get out of the shower still soapy. He'd stare at a toothbrush like it was a foreign object.
Mary brushed his teeth, shaved him and bathed him, tears running down her face.
The two had always planned for Mary to go back to work. The money would help send Matt to college. It would pay for a dream condo on the beach. Instead, Mary would need work to sustain her family.
In early 2002, she landed a nurse auditing job. A few days before training, she took a drive to make sure she could find the office. Two hours later, she found Mike in a stranger's garage looking for snakes.
She tried leaving him alone a few more times, for no more than an hour. Each time, he got into some kind of trouble. She quit her auditing job before she started it.
Mike qualified for $1,769 a month in Social Security disability benefits. Mary has been looking for work she can do at home.
Their retirement money went to bills.
Mary had to sell their Pebble Creek home. They now live in a two-bedroom apartment in New Tampa, where Mike paces from his rocking recliner to the sofa. He rocks and paces, rocks and paces.
"Need you, need you," he says, often.
Mary can't be sure what he means when he says that - or when he stands at the mirror and wails, over and over, "I'm a goon, I'm a goon."
Questions linger as to whether Pick's sufferers are self-aware, if they're "in there" somewhere, said Lee, the Penn professor.
"They go in and out," she said. "Sometimes they say things that seem to make you realize they are still there. But there is a lot to learn about the disease. A lot."
* * *
Mary, 51, sees the bags on her face and remembers Mike used to tell her she had pretty eyes. He was so happy when their boys were born with her blue eyes.
She said she has survived because of her sons.
Mike Jr., 29, is married with three young children. He drops by his parents' apartment once a week and cares for his dad while his mom goes to the grocery store.
Mary remembers what Mike Jr. said the first time he had to give his father a shower.
"Dad's gone," Mike Jr. said. "Just his body is here."
Matt, a 21-year-old who will graduate soon from the University of Florida, has offered repeatedly to quit school and return to help his mother. She won't let him.
But when Mary gets down, she calls him, and he listens patiently as she unleashes her anger, frustration and sadness.
"I know I have screwed up his studying many times, but he never said, "I can't listen right now,' " Mary said. "Never."
Once, as Mike Jr. and Matt cared for their father, Mary went to a pet store, and for two entire hours, she watched puppies play.
Mike can no longer name his sons.
He does, however, recognize his mother.
Peggy Mahoney, 73, remembers when Mike was the family rock who helped raise eight younger siblings. Her husband served in the Air Force, so it was Mike who soothed babies to sleep.
Before Mike's illness, she and her son would play Chopsticks on the piano together. He used to pick her up at work for lunch or coffee.
"Mike was my No. 1," Peggy Mahoney said. "My heart just breaks."
Like her mother-in-law, Mary speaks of her husband in the past tense.
She tries not to, but she can't help it.
"Shame on me," she scolds herself, before turning to Mike and smiling.
"You're right here, aren't you?"
He lets out a laugh that is partly a wail. His family calls it a laugh-cry.
Hehh, hehh, hehh.
She keeps his suits and ties in a closet and plans to make them into a quilt.
He is 53 now, and gaunt. He rocks his back against the couch cushion.
His ankles are so thin they barely touch the elastic of his pant legs. His mouth of broken teeth - damaged by chomping on jaw breakers, cable connectors and tea light candles - opens wide as he watches a videotape on a small television set.
On the screen, a man in a suit and tie talks rapid-fire about bad weather, generator limits and classes of circuits. He is a picture of cool as he explains rolling blackouts.
"Hehh, hehh, hehh," the rocking man laugh-cries.
"Who is that handsome man?" a lady asks the rocking man.
"Miiiike Mahoneeeeey!" he says, in a tone of both sadness and excitement. "Hehh, hehh, hehh. Miiiike Mahoneeeeey!"
- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report. Times staff writer Dong-Phuong Nguyen can be reached at 813 226-3403 or nguyen@sptimes.com
