By Sahil Mehta
21st September is celebrated as World Alzheimer Day in tribute to those to who suffer from it.
Every day I hear about some new disease,
each scarier than the one before. And maybe they aren’t really that scary but
it still frightens the hell out of me to imagine someone I know afflicted by
that disease. But the thing about most diseases - even the fatal ones like
cancer and AIDS - is that you can try and live your life normally to an extent.
You can fight these diseases with courage. You suffer, you hurt but you never
forget who or what you are. And that
eases your own suffering and that of people around you.
But Alzheimer’s is different. It’s like the
killer line from Hindi movies where the hero tells the villain that he’ll give
him a slow, painful death. Alzheimer’s is that slow, painful death. This is how
the internet might define Alzheimer’s for you.
“Alzheimer’s
disease is the most common form of dementia, a
serious brain disorder that impacts daily living through memory loss and
cognitive changes.”
What it means is that it’s a disease that
is incurable, gets progressively worse with time and slowly destroys your
memories, makes you lose all control of your body functions and then ultimately
kills you due to some external infection or something like that. It’s actually
much, much worse than this. During the first stage of this disease you lose the
ability to absorb new information. Past memories remain, but you start
forgetting the recent things. You start fumbling with words, often substituting
the wrong words in a sentence making you look like a fool. You feel irritated and
angry and start withdrawing from the world. It gets worse with time and you
slowly lose the ability to perform the most basic things. You forget your near
and dear ones. The past, which was so clear till now, starts to fade from your
memory until nothing is left there. In the end you are bed-ridden and
completely dependent, until you die. And as you suffer, the people around you
suffer thousand times more as they watch you get reduced to a shadow of who you
were.
Alzheimer’s affects 26 million people worldwide
according to current stats. Most of these are elderly people above the age of
60. You have an average life expectancy of about 8 years after your symptoms
become visible to everyone. There is no cure for Alzheimer’s. There is not even
a clear way to diagnose it. No single test exists to determine whether you
suffer from it. It takes a wide variety and physical and cognitive tests to
diagnose it. And more often than not it goes undiagnosed.
How is it caused? Why is it incurable? No
one knows. Sure there are many theories put forward by researchers, loads of
clinical trials are underway but as of now there is no cure.
The worse thing about Alzheimer’s is the
incredible about of trauma that the family or close friends experience. It
kills you to see someone you’ve have known all your life suddenly tell you that
they have no idea who you are, to see them so angry and irritated by your mere
presence. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen. And you can never expect what is going
to happen or when it’s going to happen, because one moment they’re absolutely
fine, reminiscing about the past, telling stories of their heydays and the next
moment they’re gone, unable to recognize you.
And then it hurts even more when you see them completely helpless on
their own and dependent on others for daily activities-things we take for
granted. Proud men and women, who taught you how to live, reduced to being
confused and bewildered.
I can’t write any more of this depressing
stuff. I’ve seen someone suffer from dementia, and even though it was never
diagnosed as Alzheimer’s, I can imagine what AD would feel like. My objective
is not to scare you, but to tell you that AD is a very serious medical
condition which often goes undiagnosed due to our ignorance. While it is
incurable, there are ways in which it can be delayed and maybe even prevented.
Please do go read up about Alzheimer’s and spread awareness about it. You might
end up making someone’s life a lot better.
