Our book club read Still Alice by Lisa Genova. It's a novel about a 50 year old professor of psychology at Harvard who starts forgetting words, where she is, where she is suppose to be and is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. The story followers her descent into the disease and how she and her family deal with it. Alice and her husband are very intelligent and learned people and it's 'good' to learn that this disease attacks the young and 'upper class' population as well as older and not so educated. It is a frightening story, partially because I am over 60 and sometimes just can't find the word that is on the tip of my tongue and because my aunt had Alzheimer's and my mom has the start of dementia. I spoke to another of the gals in book club and she said she just bawled when she read it (b/c of her family history). I have a feeling there will be a lot of discussion at our Tuesday evening meeting. To put it in a nutshell - You should read this book!
I have only recently begun to notice signs of forgetfulness in me...often it is the name of a store and usually it comes to me within 15 minutes, but still.
ReplyDeleteJust today my husband and I were trying to remember the name of a restaurant we used to like to go to but has since gone out of business. It took a good 10 minutes for us to remember it. It is a bit scary, but then again, remember after 60 years our brains have a LOT of stored information and it just takes a bit to get to where it is stored.
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