Facing Up to Alzheimer’s Disease
“MY HUSBAND, Alfie, was a foreman of one of South Africa’s gold mines,” explains Sally. “I was astounded when he told me that he wanted to retire. He was only 56 years old and such a clever, hardworking man. Later, I found out from his fellow workers that Alfie had started to make strange errors in judgment. They often covered up for him.
“After he retired, we bought a hotel. Since Alfie was handy, we thought he would keep busy fixing the place. But, instead, he always called in a handyman.
“That same year we took our three-year-old granddaughter for a holiday at the beach in Durban. She loved to play on the trampoline just across the road from the apartment we stayed in. One afternoon, about 4:30 p.m., Alfie took her to jump on the trampoline and said they would be back in half an hour. By 7:00 p.m., they had not returned. I phoned the police, but they said that they don’t look for missing persons until 24 hours after their disappearance. That night I thought I was going mad, as I kept imagining that they had been killed. About noon the next day, there was a knock on the door, and there stood Alfie with our granddaughter on his arm.
“‘Where were you?’ I said.
“‘Don’t be cross with me,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know.’
“‘Grandma,’ explained our granddaughter, ‘us got lost.’
“Imagine getting lost from across the road! I still do not know where they slept that night. Anyway, a friend of mine found them and directed them to the right apartment.”
After this incident, Sally took Alfie to a neurologist, who certified that he was suffering from dementia (loss of intellectual function). As it turned out, Alfie had Alzheimer’s disease (AD), for which there is as yet no effective treatment or cure.a The British journal New Scientist says that AD is “the fourth biggest killer in the developed world after heart disease, cancer and stroke.” It has been called “the major chronic illness of old age.” But AD can strike relatively early in life, as it did with Alfie.
With more and more people in affluent countries living longer, predictions of the number who will suffer from dementia are alarming. According to one study, between 1980 and 2000, there may be a 14-percent increase in Britain, a 33-percent increase in the United States, and a 64-percent increase in Canada. In 1990 an Australian TV documentary stated: “There are estimated to be 100,000 people with Alzheimer’s in Australia now. But by the end of the century, there will be 200,000.” An estimated 100 million people worldwide will suffer from AD by the year 2000.
What Is Alzheimer’s Disease?
Although research into a number of possible causes is being done, the actual cause of AD remains unknown. However, it is known that AD involves the gradual destruction of brain cells, so that parts of the brain may literally shrink. The parts worst affected are those involved in memory and thinking ability. Cells in the brain system involved in the emotions are affected early in the disease, resulting in personality changes. Other parts of the brain may be spared till later—parts having to do with sight and touch as well as the motor cortex, which directs muscular activity. These changes, explains Scientific American, “give rise to the classical, tragic picture of a person who can walk, talk and eat but cannot make sense of the world.”
Typically, the disease lasts from 5 to 10 years—but sometimes more than 20 years. As it progresses, victims are able to do less and less. Eventually, they may even fail to recognize their loved ones. In the final stages, sufferers often become bedridden and cannot speak or feed themselves. However, many victims die from other causes before reaching these final stages.
While the onset of AD is physically painless, it causes a great deal of emotional pain. Understandably, at first some fail to face up to it, hoping that the problem will go away.b However, much is to be gained from facing up to this disease and learning how to ease the emotional pain it causes. “I wish I had known earlier about how the deterioration of memory might affect the patient,” said Bert, whose 63-year-old wife has AD. Yes, it is helpful for families to learn about the nature of AD as well as about coping strategies. Please join Awake! in examining these and other factors in the next two articles.
[Footnotes]
a AD is named after Alois Alzheimer, a German physician who first described the disease in 1906 after doing an autopsy on a patient who had suffered from severe dementia. AD is thought to account for more than 60 percent of dementia cases, affecting up to 1 in 10 people over 65 years of age. Another dementia, multi-infarct dementia, is caused by ministrokes, which damage the brain.
b Caution: A thorough medical checkup is imperative before it is concluded that a person has AD. About 10 to 20 percent of dementia cases result from ailments that are treatable. As for diagnosing AD, the book How to Care for Aging Parents explains: “Alzheimer’s can be diagnosed with certainty only by studying the brain during an autopsy, but doctors can rule out other possibilities and then make a diagnosis by the process of elimination.”
[Blurb on page 4]
An estimated 100 million people worldwide will suffer from Alzheimer’s disease by the year 2000