Alzheimer's is the saddest damned thing in the world.

[Phillycat]

I work in a hospital. I was just outside waiting for a delivery, and an Alzheimer's patient, an elderly man, was being loaded into a handicapped van in his wheelchair. He alternated between screaming cursewords at his wife and crying piteously. She withstood it all, obviously used to it. The van driver was stoic as well, as the man kicked his feet while he was trying to load the wheelchair onto the lift. He patiently set the man's feet back on the wheelchair footboards, and the man would kick them off again. This went on for several minutes, and he just cursed a blue streak at his wife, calling her terrible names, then reverting to a childlike crying when she softly soothed him.

Lord, please, if you're going to give me or my husband a disease in our old age, let it be a physical ailment rather than mental. I never want to be that person, or that person's wife. :cry:

[Midlodemocrat]

1. Interestingly, there is some evidence that the personality

someone takes on when Alzheimer's sets in mirrors their personality pre-Alzheimer's. That is why some are described as combative and others pleasantly demented.

I was 'lucky' my dad was pleasantly demented. Probably because he was such a gentle giant during his youth.

[zanne]

6. I think that's true.

My mom had Alzheimer's. I was lucky enough to be able to take care of her at home. She was just as sweet and loving in her illness as she was her whole life. Even during the terrible last months of her life, when she couldn't even turn herself over in bed, she could still say "I love you." I miss her every day.

[Shine]

17. hmmm...I've actually heard the opposite: that the personality can change completely

I guess it just depends on the person and the degree to which their brain has been riddled with it.

I've had many hospice clients who have had Alzheimer's and dementia. It's a heartbreaking disease for everyone, esp. the families. :(

[China_cat]

2. What really hurts is when the woman who raised you

looks you in the face and wants to know why you're there because she doesn't know you.

[Heidi]

11. Exactly.

:hug:

[NightWatcher]

3. Alz is one of the worse thigns I've seen

I saw a grandmother who's body had turned to mush under several growing cancers that took over her entie body. I also saw my grandmother pass away this past year from heart failure and alzheimers. My girlfriend's grandfather has it too and he is going down the road at a rather rapid pace. We sit around and joke (you have to laugh or you will just cry) that we hope we go completely crazy all at once and not little by little. My grandmother was painfully aware that she was losing her mind to that cursed disease.

I hope that no one else here should have to suffer through watching a loved one die from alz related ilness.

As the joke goes. " I wanna die peacefully, in my sleep like granfather did, not screaming like the passengers in his car".

[spinbaby]

4. My grandmother's roommate at the nursing home

My grandmother recently aquired a much-younger roommate with Alzheimer's. The poor woman tells everyone about her family--her successful son in Pittsburgh, her daugher who lives in Wheeling and is coming to take her home for dinner, her sister retired in Florida. The nurse tells us that she has no living family.

[dropkickpa]

5. my dad and I have a pact

If he ends up like that, 2 hand grenades (2 in case one is a dud). If I end up like Terry Schiavo, same for me if for some reason my family is prevented from pulling the plug.

[DS1]

7. You know pills are much cleaner

than handgrenades...

[dropkickpa]

14. Oh yeah

It's partly joke, partly dead serious. Basically, do whatever it takes to ensure that swift certain death is acheived.

[zanne]

8. That we be a great idea...

If only it didn't land you in prison for the rest of your life.

[Heidi]

10. There are doctors in the world, though maybe not in the US, who could ensure an easier passage

that would be much less graphic and traumatic for your loved ones. Please keep that in mind.

[dropkickpa]

15. That's why the hand grenades

We saw my extremely bright, vibrant great grandmother descend into nothingness (something that horrified and terrified her when she was younger, and also during her periods of lucidity, which made it all the worse). Even when she'd reached the okra stage of being, there was nothing we could legally do to end it.

I wouldn't even know where to get a hand grenade, but I would do everything in my power to insure that, should my father end up in such a state, his wish to end his life would be followed. Neither one of us beleive in souls and all that hullaballoo, so why should the injunctions based on that belief apply to us? The "me" part is gone once the mind is gone, that's where personhood resides, the rest is just meat.

[Heidi]

9. My grandfather, one of the truest progressves ever in a very red state, succumbed to it

in September. The last three years of his life were absolute hell: here was a man with more than one academic degree, alert enough to know that something wasn't right but entirely powerless to do anything about it. RIP, Papa. :cry:

[Broken_Hero]

18. ...........

:hug: Sorry, :(

[Rabrrrrrr]

12. IMO, it's the worst possible disease to get. Dreadful.

Dreadful for the person who has it - or at least, until they have it so badly they don't know they have it any more.

And AWFUL - completely AWFUL - for the family.

And it can drag on for years, decades.

If I could ban one disease from this planet, it would be Alzheimer's.

[TrogL]

13. If i get that bad, take me out and shoot me

It will be a blessing.

I'm getting concerned that my mind is already starting to go. I'm a musician and I'm forgetting my repetoire faster than I can re-learn it. The other day I completely lost the words to the Lord's Prayer.

I'm 52.

[Oeditpus Rex]

16. In a way, it was best for all concerned

that my dad died within about three years of his Alzheimer's becoming apparent. He had only a few "episodes" — that I witnessed, anyway — and none were anything like the one you described. (The worst was the time he walked out the front door late one night. When I asked him where he was going, he said he had to catch the bus to work. He'd been retired for 15 years and had never taken a bus to work, especially at 12:30 a.m.)

The only time he didn't recognize me was the last time I saw him alive.

I don't like to think of how bad it could've gotten — for him and for us.