Battling Alzheimer

I feel guilty. Here I’m writing for a blog called “Battling Alzheimer’s” and instead of telling you about the newest drugs, or the latest theories, I’m telling you about washing dishes with my grandmother.

But when I look at the research into new drugs and new preventions, and when I remember my grandmother, I keep thinking that a lot of the researchers are all wrong. They look at Alzheimer’s disease as if it were an infection that you can vaccinate against or take a pill for. Most of the solutions they’re promoting require you to put something into your mouth. I don’t think the mouth is the key to Alzheimer’s. I think the mind is.

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I haven’t seen the critically-acclaimed film Away From Her, but it fascinates me. The Alzheimer’s Association promotes it (it promotes the Alzheimer’s Association), and it’s available on DVD. Based on “The Bear Came Over the Mountain,” a short story by acclaimed novelist Alice Munro, it may earn Julie Christie a second Oscar. Director and screenwriter Sarah Polley, a Canadian actress, was also nominated for an Academy Award, for Best Adapted Screenplay. Gordon Pinsent and Olympia Dukakis put in fine performances too. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a 95, which is high for them (122 fresh tomatoes, only 7 rotten ones).

In Away From Her, a couple is separated for the first time in fifty years when she enters a nursing home with a 30-day “no-visitors” policy (do Alzheimer’s facilities really have such rules?) after wandering away and being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. In those thirty days, she develops a relationship with another man, and her husband has to choose how to respond.

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One reason why Alzheimer’s disease is so difficult to treat, and sometimes even to identify, is that its symptoms can be caused by other diseases. Earlier I mentioned that, besides Alzheimer’s, my grandmother also had macular degeneration - she was losing her vision in her 60s, and was legally blind for thirty years. Sensory deprivation can cause delusions in itself. People with macular degeneration can hallucinate. Perhaps the mind, struggling to make sense of the fog it sees, gets a little too creative.

Alzheimer’s is primarily a disease of the old, and the older you are, the more likely you are to have it. There are hundreds of thousands of exceptions, in both directions. Kris, who writes Dealing with Alzheimer’s, is one of hundreds of thousands of people under 65 who have early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. 82-year-old blogger Millie Garfield, who writes My Mom’s Blog, has a better memory than I do. The ageless project lists ten bloggers over 75.

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It’s not politically correct to be unfair and unjust and prejudiced toward anyone. But you can get away with it with mentally handicapped people. Or you think you can. Really, they can sense your attitude even if they don’t understand your words. In the case of Alzheimer’s patients, they may understand your attitude and your words very well, but be unable to talk to you about it. So we think we can treat them as we find convenient.

In that sense, an Alzheimer’s patient is like someone who doesn’t speak English very well. I live in a college town, where hundreds of very intelligent people may have trouble impressing me with their intelligence. When I hear halting, broken English, I instinctively associate that with toddlers or severely retarded adults. But if they spoke about genetics or cybernetics in their native language (if I could understand their native language), I would quickly realize how smart they were. I have to remind myself, over and over, that my perceptions and assumptions are wrong. I can’t judge someone’s intelligence unless we’re both communicating on the same wavelength. And an Alzheimer’s patient, as my grandmother often said about herself, may not “have the vocabulary to express” themselves on the same wavelength. The old wisdom is still there, but she can’t share it.

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By Royane Real

Alzheimer’s disease is a disease that strikes terror into many of us, especially as we get older.

Alzheimer’s is a very serious brain disease that attacks the parts of the brain responsible for the creation of memory and for thinking.

As the disease progresses, more and more parts of the brain become affected. The patient loses the ability to live independently, and the sense of self and identity disappears. Eventually the patient dies.

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By Riley Hendersen

When the Alzheimer’s Association was formed in April of 1980, many people were still doubting the disease existed. In the years before the Alzheimer’s Association was formed, many people thought the symptoms of the disease where simply a sign of getting older.

The mission of the Alzheimer’s Association is “a world without Alzheimer’s disease,” according to the organization’s website. Individuals and businesses fund the nonprofit organization, that in turn funds research and local programs.

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