Let’s talk about Alzheimer

Let’s talk about Alzheimer

Before we go further, can you list down the steps involved when we want to use the bathroom?

First, our brain needs to navigate us towards the location of the bathroom, commands our hand and finger in reaching for the doorknob, turning and pushing it just to open the door!! There are so much more after steps involved afterwards, and what if we forget any one of the steps that we should perform it automatically such as knowing we should open the toilet seat up or locating the toilet in my own house. To me, that’s terrifying and that’s Alzheimer.

Nowadays, I believed that people might have labelled the disease as ‘a common condition in the elderly in which they keep on forgetting things’. In fact, Alzheimer is a neurological disorder under the umbrella term, Dementia which is ‘the loss of cognitive functioning—thinking, remembering, and reasoning—and behavioural abilities to such an extent that it interferes with a person's daily life and activities’(National Institute on Aging, 2017). As a speech therapist, we might encounter clients with Alzheimer disease and it is not a bed of roses as we need to give short and simple instruction consistently and repeatedly. I have tried to call an old lady suspected with Alzheimer to draw a clock showing 3-o-clock and attached below is the result:

(Alzheimer Draw-a-clock test)

For those who which to understand more about Alzheimer, I strongly recommend you to read up ‘Still Alice’, a novel by Lisa Genova that describe how a highly educated women, ‘Alice’ battle against this progressive disease. The book makes me feel so sad as it stated the fact that Alzheimer is hereditary, causing Alice to open up a pandora box, a life as a worry, frustration and hardihood which almost tear Alice’s family apart.

However, most of the Malaysia Chinese will just accept the fact that their parents/partner may keep on forgetting things, and they will take that as a natural process. I don’t know whether this point of view is the same in the whole Asia, and I began to ruminate, if we can simply accept the disease this way, our life may be much easier isn’t it? Rather than keep on agonizing what will happen to us or the next generation due to the fear of getting Alzheimer passed by our elderly family member, worry that we might reach a stage where we will just sit down, daydreaming and forget about everything.

To be honest, I don’t have this kind of experience, but I was hoping that there are more campaign and novel like ‘still Alice’ that create an opportunity for us to think and understand more about the challenges faced by the patient themselves and the family.