Alice Monologue

Hi Alice! How are you doing? Fine? I hope so.

She states, “After a while you forget / what you really look like. / You think your mouth is the size it was. / You pretend not to care” (Atwood, 771). Her skin has also aged and is paler; it no longer has “the golden slick / of fresh spread-margarine” (Atwood, 771). She talks about how the clothes she has worn are

Today is the fourth day me and Little Ann have been sitting here waiting to hunt. Billy is just walking around the camp looking at other dogs and talking to the hunters. He starts making his way back to Little Ann and I. In the buggy Billy digs us each out a weenie and feeds it to us. I swallow mine whole and look at him and ask for more. I don't really think he understood me because he just walked away smiling.

As she tells about her changes she

(Juan and Eva are arriving to a night at the opera and sit down to applause. Music starts. Eva and Juan enjoy the music until, suddenly, Eva doubles over in pain and starts gasping for breath. )

On her way to the PCT, she had to say good bye to Greg. After that, when she was alone, she started to value the small things that she had in her life. For example, when she was taking a bath she remembered what her mother said when she was alive “The first thing I did when each of you was born was kiss every part of you” (135). She said that she didn’t remember but if she did, she would never forget. She was really excited to go back on the trail, but she didn’t count on the snow.

From the moment she sees the White Rabbit taking his watch from his waistcoat pocket, Alice tries to understand the logic of Wonderland. None of the rules that she has been taught seem to apply in Wonderland. The characters in Wonderland have no sense of manners and respond to her questions with answers that make no sense. For example, the Mad Hatter asks the questions, “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” (Alice 51). Alice assumes he is asking a riddle and she begins to try to answer it, thinking the Hatter would not ask a riddle without knowing the answer. When Alice is unable to figure out the riddle, the Hatter explains that there is no answer. He does not explain why he asked the riddle, he simply says, “I haven’t the slightest idea” (Alice 53). In which Alice replies, “I think you might do something better with the time, than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers” (Alice 53). The Hatter then responds with a lecture on Time, which he depicts as a person. Time being depicted as a person makes no logical sense to Alice. In the end, Alice rebels during the trial scene when the King said “Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court” (Alice 88). Alice objects to the absurd nature of the trial saying, “Who cares for you? You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” (Alice 91). This final scene is the end of her dream, and she wakes up with her head in her sister’s lap.

“Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a slowly progressive disease of the brain that is characterized by impairment of memory and eventually by disturbances in reasoning, planning, language, and perception.” (Howard Crystal) In Health 1000 we were asked to read the book Still Alice. I have never dealt with or have done any study on Alzheimer’s disease before reading this book. After finishing this book it has really opened my eyes to how bad of a disease and how it cripples the mind. I never imagined the effect of this disease on a patient and the patient family. This book is about a upper middle aged lady named Alice who is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, and how she and her family learn how to deal with disease. One of the things this book

This to me, could accurately relate to her own adolescence. In a letter she

Wait, what is this I am hearing? I am certainly not evil one bit. How could someone ever think that I, the Queen of Hearts, am evil. Not in my life would I ever kill Alice! She is such a sweet girl you know.

Alice was born. A tiny bundle wrapped in pink, warm and soft, soft now. Held and adored, fawned over by others. Sweet, delicate, beautiful, beautiful. Like a flower, a rose.

Alice realizes that she should stop trying to belong to such a confusing world without

I saw Still Alice this week. I wanted to see the Glen Campbell movie (which I will watch later) but opted for this one first. What a stirring movie! Watching the progression of her decline, and realizing that she KNEW that she was affected, was very sad. It was heartening to see the support that her family gave her, even while dealing with their own issues. The fact that she was proactive on the front end, in obtaining the diagnostic testing helped her family be better able to understand what was happening and to support her. I love the fact that she and her daughter were able to have a better relationship, and that her daughter was truly able to see her mom, even when her mom had trouble seeing her earlier.

Anna is Alice’s oldest daughter; she’s a successful lawyer and is married to Charles, also a lawyer. Anna is strong and fiercely independent just like her mother. Anna deals with her mother’s disease by suggesting that if her mom “thinks for a second” then maybe she’ll be able to remember things (p. 173). Anna, however still makes time to care for her mom when her dad is away.

She displays this during therapy and other occasions. One of the exercises required her to eat an amount of food during a thirty minute period, and then wait. She was only able to do the exercise once, because she felt as though she would gain weight; a negative outcome would result from doing the exercise more than once, she would immediately gain weight. Continuing, she often said that she had “abandonment by others if she gained weight.” This cognitive distortion seemed quite prevalent; she predicted that there would be a negative outcome immediately after gaining weight.