Still Alice
I Forget That I Have Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer's disease is a familiar sight to me. I had a sad experience during my work as a nurse in my country Colombia and Spain with Alzheimer disease patients. Day by day I came to know each patient’s story because every day they were living the moment without remember the last minute. This is also what happened to Lisa Genova’s novel Still Alice. The protagonists is a 50 year old woman, a very well organized, efficient, highly-educated, and smart Harvard professor, wife of a successful man, and the mother of three grown children, who has diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. People have learned about the progression of Alice’s disease through her reactions, so feeling what she feels- a slowly building terror, the big changes with her family, professional life, and her identity, but we also have started to understand how Alice finds positive aspects in all this, she started to enjoy more of her family, she also began to take more time for her, about how she can remember the things without help. When a patient is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, the relation between the patient and his/her family suffers big changes. With Alice, is the negative aspects start when she becomes dependent on her family members and in need of certain care. The impact on Alice’s home is visible in the new habits, routines, roles and functions within the family dynamics. All of her family members suffer as a result of the disease to a lesser or greater extent. Her husband’s life is affected because he has less time to do his work and other activities, as he needs to take care of her. He also loses his patience because Alice behaves out of the ordinary, and that can become annoying in some ways. An example, when Alice forgets her cell phone at home and he said: “Then duct tape it to your head, I don’t care, I’m not going through this every time you forget you’re supposed to show up somewhere.” (Genova 99). On the other hand, her
Alzheimer's disease is a familiar sight to me. I had a sad experience during my work as a nurse in my country Colombia and Spain with Alzheimer disease patients. Day by day I came to know each patient’s story because every day they were living the moment without remember the last minute. This is also what happened to Lisa Genova’s novel Still Alice. The protagonists is a 50 year old woman, a very well organized, efficient, highly-educated, and smart Harvard professor, wife of a successful man, and the mother of three grown children, who has diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. People have learned about the progression of Alice’s disease through her reactions, so feeling what she feels- a slowly building terror, the big changes with her family, professional life, and her identity, but we also have started to understand how Alice finds positive aspects in all this, she started to enjoy more of her family, she also began to take more time for her, about how she can remember the things without help. When a patient is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, the relation between the patient and his/her family suffers big changes. With Alice, is the negative aspects start when she becomes dependent on her family members and in need of certain care. The impact on Alice’s home is visible in the new habits, routines, roles and functions within the family dynamics. All of her family members suffer as a result of the disease to a lesser or greater extent. Her husband’s life is affected because he has less time to do his work and other activities, as he needs to take care of her. He also loses his patience because Alice behaves out of the ordinary, and that can become annoying in some ways. An example, when Alice forgets her cell phone at home and he said: “Then duct tape it to your head, I don’t care, I’m not going through this every time you forget you’re supposed to show up somewhere.” (Genova 99). On the other hand, her
Cited: Genova, Lisa. Still Alice. New York, London, Toronto, and Sydney: Gallery Books, 2009.