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Showing posts from 2021

'Still Alice' missed a dreadful aspect of my father's Alzheimer's torment

I've just finished reading and thoroughly appreciating (can I enjoy a book about Alzheimer's?) Still Alice by Lisa Genova . I was fortunate enough to have been in this TED audience in 2018 when Lisa, herself a TED delegate, told us her story. Still Alice is a fictional account told from the perspective of a middle-aged Harvard Professor who develops Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease (EOAD). The reason Lisa picked EOAD rather than the far more common form of Alzheimer's affecting up to 80% of people suffering dementia ( 8% of us will probably develop dementia ) was to explore how a woman in the prime of her life (career, marriage, family etc) might experience progressively losing everything she previously took for granted, whereas we might expect elderly people to have already lost memory functions as well as their careers and possibly their spouses by the time they develop the disease. It was a powerful and deeply moving story which I commend everyone to read. It echoed