alzheimers - Jezebel

posts about #alzheimers more →
Do You Recognize This Woman?
This Modern Love Features Glasses Half Full To Overflowing
Sandra Day O'Connor Talks About The Courts, Avoids Republicans
The Love Song Of The Alzheimer's Association Gala
Blythe Danner Says Gwyneth Is Not Divorcing
Panic-Stricken Kim Basinger's Maybe Not-So-Healthy Heart

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colormeroutine
08/26/09

In reply to Do You Recognize This Woman?
My dad's parents have never had cable TV, or the internet. They do not read magazines. If they have ever heard Britney Spears's name, it was from one of my cousins, and if they could identify her photo I would keel over in shock
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Dancingfrog
08/26/09

In reply to Do You Recognize This Woman?
There must be more to this... isn't there? Reading the article, yes, there is. It's not about the celebs themselves, it's about the brain activity going on in the patient's head as they are shown pictures of celebs. If the research pans out, it sounds like it might eventually lead to a good way to screen for Alzheimers.
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Rare Affinity
08/26/09

In reply to Do You Recognize This Woman?
The memory tests for Alzheimers seems flawed. Long term memory is said to be the last to go. Therefore a patient might identify the long dead Carson but not recognise a more recent celebrity. I have difficulty distinguishing between many of today’s cookie cutter starlets. Nor is there any point showing famous politicians as there are some woeful levels of ignorance when it comes to general knowledge, at least in surveys carried out in the UK.
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cuteasabutton
08/26/09

In reply to Do You Recognize This Woman?
I would say not knowing who Britney Spears is is a good indication of a healthy and sound mind. If you know who Johnny Carson is you're just old.
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Zombies make the heart grow fonder
08/26/09

In reply to Do You Recognize This Woman?
Did anyone ever see that SNL commercial about the celebrity name translator? Moms everywhere are going to be erroneously diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's when pictures of Jake Gyllenhaal are shown to them and they say "Joe Geronimo".
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Lady Skittlehattington
08/26/09

In reply to Do You Recognize This Woman?
Okay, seriously? Because my grandpa identified all celebrities as "that negro fella," or "that gal from Bonanza." This was before Alzheimers.
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CurtCole
08/26/09

In reply to Do You Recognize This Woman?
I hope they don't use celebrities we all actively try to forget.
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CurtCole
08/26/09

@CurtCole: Case in point.
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Yahtzii
08/26/09

@CurtCole: Exhibit B.
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BabyJane
08/26/09

@CurtCole: And may I add this.
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kkatt
03/23/09

In reply to This Modern Love Features Glasses Half Full To Overflowing
This is so sad. I remember going to visit my great grandmother at her nursing home. She knew my Mom and her brother but she thought I was my Mom's sister. My mom was probably about 34 at the time and I was 8. She recognized her sons (my Grandpa and great uncle) and I remember her asking them to take her home. She knew she wasn't at home and she just wanted to go back there. I will never ever ever forget the look on my grandpa's face when she asked him that.
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Tart of Darkness
03/23/09

@kkatt: If this helps you at all, a very common believe in Alzheimer's dementia is the inability to recognize home as crampyscamp mentioned. People with Alzheimer's often leave their own homes when they can to wander and inevitably when asked where they are going (even while trying to get out of their own house) they will say they are "going home". Or they need to go home or some similar concept.

I've always found that spiritually intriguing given that the home they seek isn't the one they have.
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Marsgaret
03/23/09

In reply to This Modern Love Features Glasses Half Full To Overflowing
It's true, you're "freed from your memory." But unfortunately (in my dad's case), I still had enough bad ones for both of us. And it drove me fucking nuts that so many people around him who had not experienced the truly terrible things at his hand that my brother and I did were so eager to have us make nice and pretend like everything was, and had always been, fine.

He died this past December. I did not cry.
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mommy_dearest
03/23/09

@Marsgaret: Here is a column from Newsweek you should read: [www.newsweek.com] It is about when relief is what we feel when someone dies. I am very sorry that you experienced this.
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Wit is periodically disensouled
03/23/09

In reply to This Modern Love Features Glasses Half Full To Overflowing
The father of a family member's co-worker (I know - awkward) recently died after a shockingly short battle with Alzheimer's disease. His family had just regretfully put him in a home because they weren't equipped to to take care of him.

Anyway, his daughter went to visit him a week or so before he died, and while he didn't remember her, she said she was surprised to find that he was really happy there. Apparently he thought his roommate was an old buddy and they were teenagers camping together. From what I heard, he was like that until he died.
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Maulleigh
03/23/09

In reply to This Modern Love Features Glasses Half Full To Overflowing
Imagine: to be freed from your memory, to have every awful thing that ever happened to you wiped away - and not just your past, but your worries about the future, too. Because with no sense of time or memory, past and future cease to exist, along with all sense of loss and regret. Not to mention grudges and hurt feelings, arguments and embarrassments...And that's the fantasy, isn't it? To have your record cleared. To be able not to merely forget, but to expunge your unhappy childhood, or unrequited love, or rocky marriage from your memory. To start over again.

I was just fantasizing about this this weekend. It seems like I chew over the same things I've chewed over for years: this humiliation, that humiliation, this angry episode. Years!

There's a good chance I'll get Alzheimer's. I don't look forward to it at all, but I do look forward to losing all these bad memories.
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elephantshoes
03/23/09

@Maulleigh: There are ways to let them go for good while "sane". I'd start by reading The Four Agreements and then move onto The Power of Now. It takes a lot of work, but it's very freeing to not punish yourself for something over and over and over....
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Maulleigh
03/23/09

@elephantshoes: Thanks for the tip. The Four Agreements is a must-read but I haven't read the Power of Now yet. It's been on my list for awhile.
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bureaucrette
03/23/09

In reply to This Modern Love Features Glasses Half Full To Overflowing
My grandfather doesn't recognize his own reflection anymore. The last time I saw him, he was trying to offer Cheetos to the man in the microwave door. Sometimes it's hard to find humor in the most ridiculous things.
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DexterHaven
03/23/09

@bureaucrette: Oh this made me so sad. My dad died last year after a long struggle with Alzheimers, and there were so many heartbreaking moments. The worst was when he woke up in the middle of the night and asked me 'Am I dead? is this hell?' The sensation of not beng able to know what is going on in their heads is really painful.
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AtomiClash: humanitarian misanthrope
03/23/09

In reply to This Modern Love Features Glasses Half Full To Overflowing
Watching my grandmother slowly dissolve into Alzheimer's over 20+ years (early on-set and slow-progressing) is a part of my childhood that stands apart from that of many peers. Her life was sad enough to begin with, and one would not accuse her of being a funny person even when she was well. That said, the disease is one which, thankfully, is eventually unnoticed by the person afflicted. Leleux makes a beautiful point - it opens doors for reconciliation that is cathartic for family and the afflicted alike. My grandmother, thinking I was her long-dead younger sister, was able to say those things which she had not been able to say 40 years earlier; and I hope that it made her burden lighter in her twilight years.
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LindsayC: doctoral hilarity ensues
03/23/09

@AtomiClash: I'm sure you made a difference to her. I think the hardest thing to deal with (at least for me- both grandparents on my father's side had dementia and "lost" me before they lost my older brothers) is them not remembering who you are. I can remember so clearly the expression on my grandfather's face- knowing that he should know who I am, but really having no earthly idea. I think it takes a lot of strength to allow someone you love to do that.
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Samanthrax
03/23/09

In reply to This Modern Love Features Glasses Half Full To Overflowing
Alzheimer's is prevalent in my family. I'm not sure if it's hereditary or not, but I recently had a conversation with my mother. She told me that after watching both of my grandmothers so mentally decayed at the end, that she's decided to stockpile pills so she can just end before she gets that bad.

What a terrible conversation, and what a terrible, terrible disease.
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Penny_Esq
03/23/09

@Samanthrax: My mother feels the same way; she wants to go to the Netherlands for euthanasia if she ever faces the kind of dementia my grandmother suffers from. A lot of the stories here involve sufferers becoming lovely and kind, and capable of sharing feelings and thoughts in ways they couldn't before. My grandma, on the other hand, is angry and mean now, and just rakes my mom and her brother over the coals when they go to see her. Me, she just sort of nods at disdainfully and ignores. It's awful for everyone, including my grandmother, I'm sure, as I can't imagine being that full of anger is any more pleasant than being on its receiving end.
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musicpup
03/23/09

@Penny_Esq: Yeah, my mother's experience is that her mother turned angry, mean and spiteful thanks to the disease. The last time Mama went to see my grandmother was in the late 90s; she hasn't subjected herself to the torture since because it's awful to hear the things that come out of her mouth.
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musicpup
03/23/09

In reply to This Modern Love Features Glasses Half Full To Overflowing
My own grandmother has Alzheimer's, and it was early onset. I have never met her for this reason. She demanded to be "locked away" because she was no longer the person she used to be and would only steadily worsen from there. I wish I could have met her and seen what she used to be; now, all I have is faded pictures I occasionally dig out of the many shoe boxes with pictures and the mental image of an ailing, frail woman who is at the mental age of a toddler at most.

It's not fun.
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sarah.of.a.lesser.god (aka Mrs. BrutallyHonestHobbit)
03/23/09

@musicpup rodstaff: Oh my God, that is so heartbreaking that she demanded that. Hugs.
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DinaRonson : Elizabeth Cady Stanton
03/23/09

@musicpup rodstaff: That is awful.

Although I had to watch 3 Grandparents health (Mental & physical) deteriorate; not in a million years would I give up the time I had with them.

I am truly envious of people who get to know their grandparents as adult grandchildren.

I was a child when mine passed or became ill.

A grandparent is a special thing, something not everyone is lucky enough to know.

It is so very sad that you never got to meet yours.
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musicpup
03/23/09

@sarah.of.a.lesser.god (aka Mrs. BrutallyHonestHobbit): I firmly believe she did it with the intention of sparing her two daughters and other family members pain. My mother visited her in her nursing home in the late 90s and it apparently was very traumatic because this woman was truly no longer her mother. She did not recognize her daughter and said some truly awful things, the kind that slip out when you have no recollection of what polite is and who you are speaking to. It's just awful all around.

I am deathly afraid of either of my parents getting Alzheimer's. My father is 60, my mother 58. Watching someone fade slowly into the semblance of what they once were is just a terrifying, traumatic thought.
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sarah.of.a.lesser.god (aka Mrs. BrutallyHonestHobbit)
03/23/09

@musicpup rodstaff: I'm so sorry your family had to go through that. My dad is so young that when he's at places like the grocery store, people get really frustrated/angry because he constantly does things slow/wrong and they think he's an asshole or idiot. He has a lot of days where he just wants to hide from society.
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rosasparks
03/23/09

@musicpup rodstaff: My grandfather, mother's dad, was ravaged by Alzheimer's.

He forgot he beat my mother and her siblings for YEARS, and killed my grandmother. He was a loving, docile man.

It tortured my mother and made my aunt, well, not happy, but relieved. It made my mother more angry than ever, and my aunt feel that since he suffered his whole life, up until that point, at least he had some years of peace.

I sided with my mother. We haven't lost our memories and we still have to live with everything he did. It was/is one of the worst and challenging life experiences in my life.

He died 3 years ago. Quietly, peacefully, in his sleep.
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rosasparks
03/23/09

@rosasparks is entertained by bobby jindal: His onset Alzheimer's had changed him, to loving and docile.

Sorry, I amend my comment.
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musicpup
03/23/09

@rosasparks is entertained by bobby jindal: That's incredible and tragic and I don't know if I'd had it in me to forgive him, either. It seems unfair that someone who subjected others to that amount of physical and emotional torture should get an easy way out by forgetting. Those who witness the progression of Alzheimer's can never forget, nor should they. I'm sorry your family had to go through that. -hugs-

@sarah.of.a.lesser.god (aka Mrs. BrutallyHonestHobbit): That's exactly what I'm afraid of. My father has a tendency to be flaky, forgetful and bumbling; he's been that way ever since I can remember. How far could it progress - if he had Alzheimer's - before it would be noticed? I am so sorry about your father, and I think people should shut the hell up in grocery stores. The only time anyone ought to be worried would be when a customer is drunk or stoned out of their mind.
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