' Still Alice Movie Review: Early-Onset Alzheimer's Disease

Dung Vu
Nursing 53
October 6, 2016
Extra Credit: “Still Alice” Movie Review This movie is about a psychologist named Alice Howland diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimer's disease is a progressive, incurable disease that destroys memory and important mental functions.Alice displayed many signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, such as, mental decline, difficulty thinking and understanding, disorientation, forgetfulness, difficulty concentrating, agitation, self-care deficits, personality changes, getting lost, and restlessness. Alice is smart and successful but everything falls apart when she gets Alzheimer's disease. Alice is invited to participate in a conference at Stanford where she notices that she was forgetting simple words during her presentation. Afterwards, Alice flies to Los Angeles to see her youngest daughter, Lydia. During their discussion about Lydia’s future, Lydia notices Alice is becoming forgetful. After, Alice has her appointment with Dr. Moyer and at the end of the assessment, Dr.
Moyer requests an MRI for Alice.

Alice and John attend a Christmas party, where she meets her graduate student's wife but forgets her after 15 minutes.
Prior to Christmas, Alice visits a neurologist, Dr. Davis, whom diagnosed Alice with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Alice probably inherited Alzheimer’s from her father, who died of alcoholism and Alice’s children have a fifty-per-cent chance of carrying the mutated gene. Later, Alice tells John about diagnosis. John wants Alice to be screened for mutations linked to Alzheimer's to verify whether or not she truly has it. Later, it's confirmed that Alice has these mutations. On the way home from the appointment, John and Alice decide to talk to the children, so they can get checked for mutations. A few days later, Anna and Tom are checked and only Anna has the mutations. Soon after, John and Alice go on vacation. Alice has a break down because she doesn't remember where the bathroom is and urinated on
herself. As the days go by, Alice has more moments, one day she thinks her neighbor’s kitchen is her own, and she left her cell phone in the fridge. Then in spring, Alice is invited to speak at a conference about her experience. While looking through her computer, Alice finds a file titled 'Butterfly'. It's the note Alice wrote to herself earlier in the movie. It's a note saying that she's a wonderful woman and if the disease has gotten too far. It's time to commit suicide by swallowing a bottle of pills. The suicide attempt was unsuccessful because John has moved them. In the summer, Alice and John return to their vacation home and Alice has no idea where or who she is. In the last scene, Alice is at home with Lydia. Lydia reads a story to Alice and Alice remarks that it is about love, which made Lydia very happy.

Overall, the movie portrayed Alzheimer’s disease at its best. It’s is a progressive, incurable disease. The movie was able to list all the signs and symptoms, genetic aspect, and the hardship on the patient, family, and friends. I was able to experience Alzheimer’s disease through Alice and truly understand to the difficulties she went through.