Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease is one dilemma that both the senior and would-be senior citizens are facing with concern today.

Everybody wants to live a long life and a life worth living. It is common knowledge that we humans become more withdrawn, indifferent, insecure and apathetic as we age, yet to strive to live is still our primary option however miserable our lives may be. Life is too precious to lose and death too fearsome to face.

But what would life be with Alzheimer's Disease?

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) is a form of brain disorder characterized by a person's inability to carry out daily activities due to the gradual degeneration of the brain's memory tissues. It usually affects older people, the people at their retirement age and onwards, although there have been cases where early onset of the disease were observed in people who were still at the fourth or fifth decade of their lives.

There is no established cause for Alzheimer's disease but there are lots of probable causes and risk factors contributory to the onset of this ailment.
Some suspected causes of AD are genetic relationship or family line, mind impairing sicknesses like high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, cholesterol and diet, and the environment.

I belong to a family with a few amnesic members up my line. Stories of disorientation and misplacing things are not uncommon with them. I can remember a time during my teenage years when my mother told me a story how she lost her way to the farm where my father was tending coconuts. It was a big wonder then how she could lose the way that she kept on tramping along almost everyday during that time. She told us that she was really lost and everything seemed upside down. Superstition simply led her to believe that the unusual phenomenon was the work of the spirits who wanted to play around with her. She concluded her story by saying that everything returned to normal when she paused to pray.

My mother has a habit of forgetting or misplacing things.

My mother's father had also experienced losing his way home from town. They lived in the countryside. He narrated that while on his way home in broad daylight, everything just suddenly became different from what they used to be including the grasses and the trees that grew along the way. Good that he was on a horse that remembered the way very well. He was brought home anchored on the belief that it was all a show brought upon him by the spirits. It happened in the 1930's.

The word "Alzheimer" was known to me only in the late 80's when I happened to bump about the subject in an American publication. It was then that I began to doubt my mother's and her father's story.

My mother is now 83 years old. I can sometimes observe her being restless and so forgetful, accusing everyone of stealing the things that she herself misplaced.
AD specialists are very uncommon in my country. Even in the absence of an expert opinion, all of us 6 siblings agree that our mother has some kind of AD. Our youngest brother is a doctor of medicine and he thinks so too.

Our close family bonding, unconditional love for our mother and some basic knowledge about AD had helped us understand our mother's situation. She just needs love and care in the last few years of her life and it shall not be denied her at all cost. We treat her like a matriarch.

Not one of us 6 siblings have symptoms of early onset AD. Our eldest is almost 60 years old and our youngest already past 40. I don't know what will happen if one of us goes over the 60 years age bracket.

I am 49 years old but the thought of AD doesn't bother me at all. As far as I know, I don't have AD's common early signs like memory loss, difficulty in performing familiar tasks, problems with language, disorientation to time and place, poor judgment, or misplacing things. But should these things happen to me, I wouldn't have any other choice but to accept the glaring reality and find ways to alleviate or to retard the already slow progression of the malady like getting the help of a professional, taking brain-nourishing vitamins, watching my diet and nurturing my spiritual life, this would at least keep me at peace with the world. No cure has yet been discovered to overcome Alzheimer's disease, but a good preparation for its coming will help in making things easier for both the patient and the people around him. Like the life of the king cicada, AD takes time to develop but ends shortly.

Almost all cases of death in the elderly are not caused by this disease.

We should therefore put our worries about Alzheimer's disease behind. In today's fast-paced life, there's a big chance that it won't be able to catch up with us. We don't have much time to get it anymore.

Seventy good lifelong years for a lifetime is good enough, too good in fact.

Let us instead take focus on the care of our physical health, for in a sound body, there lies a sound mind where AD has no place to stay.

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