Alzheimer's Poem

     Alzheimer’s disease is a form of dementia, “a brain disorder that seriously affects a person’s ability to carry out daily activities (Shenk 14)”. Alzheimer’s is a progressive and irreversible brain disorder that slowly destroys a person’s memory and ability to learn, make judgments, communicate, and accomplish daily activities. As Alzheimer’s progresses, individuals may also experience changes in personality and behavior, such as anxiety, suspiciousness or aggravation, as well as illusions or hallucinations.

1) This video was an educational and eye-opening documentary about the infamous Alzheimer’s Disease and its effects on the victim and their family. The film follows several different families, each directly affected by the disease, and how they cope with the loss of their, or a loved one’s, memories and mind. One such family, the Noonans, had a rare form of the disease, where its destruction of the mind began much earlier in life, around age fifty. Three of the Noonan siblings out of ten caught Alzheimer’s and none of the other seven knew whether they had the gene for it or not, passed on by their mother, who also died of this. Watching this unfold in the movie “The Forgetting” was rather eye-opening,

The author uses imagery in the poem to enable the reader to see what the speaker sees. For example, in lines 4-11 the speaker describes to us the

I am writing on behalf of Lynn and Gilbert (Gil) Mabry, in reference to Gil’s mother Valeria (Val), recounting some of my memories in relation to Val’s Alzheimer’s progression. On numerous family visits over the course of seven years, there was a marked decline in both her physical and mental health.

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

Alzheimer's, the word strikes fear in some and an off-handed glance in others. The fact still remains that Alzheimer’s is an extremely shattering disease that removes the mind fraction by fraction over a period of time, this could even take decades. It begins as small memory lapses, slowly progressing to memory breaches but then progressively eroding your life to the point where around-the-clock care is the only option. With severe Alzheimer's, as we almost hear daily that patients have wandered off and gotten lost. In my own life, my grandfather was not even able to recognize his family members. Alzheimer's was a little known disease before 1960, but today it threatens to completely derail the health system in the United States.

The words moved into her mind, like leaves on an autumn breeze. She awoke to find the phone between her cheek and the pillow, the insistent buzzing the only sound from the black receiver. Had there been a voice on the line? Or had she only dreamed it? Or was she even hallucinating? She had had dreams before, but the kind that would wake her like an alarm bell. Heart pounding, pulse racing, it would take her several moments to get her to know where she was and that she had been dreaming.

Alzheimer’s is a disorder that occurs when an individual’s brain cells begin to die gradually, over an unknown period of time. Those suffering from Alzheimer’s experience a multitude of symptoms such as not being able to identify family, friends, and acquaintances, having the incapacity to grasp new knowledge, and undergoing states of confusion.

In the poem “Alzheimer’s”, Kelly Cherry has written about her father. It begins with an old man trying to make sense of the things around him. He is obviously confused, but tries to hide it. She writes that he carries with him, “A book he sometimes pretends to read” (Line 5). The man seems to identify with the struggle of the flowers as they fight for space on the brick wall, just as he is struggling with reconciling this house with the one he remembers (Lines 6-7) (15). Alzheimer’s

The nervous system is a multiplexed body system that controls most other body systems directly or indirectly by sending and receiving signals through a complex system of nerves. As a whole, the nervous system can be broken down into the central nervous system (CNS) and peripheral nervous system (PNS). The CNS is composed of the brain and spinal cord while the PNS is composed of peripheral nerves that branch off of the spinal cord and continue to branch to reach the most distal points of the limbs. The PNS can be further broken down into the afferent and efferent division. The afferent division deals with information brought to the CNS from the nerve receptors. Furthermore, the afferent division breaks down into somatic sensory receptors whose

In “Alzheimer” Kelly cherry tells the story of a old man with Alzheimer. She is telling his story as he is coming home to what we expect to be his wife. This is a narrative poem in which we see this shell of a old man remembering bits and pieces from his house which seems to be the only thing that he remembers. The pieces are reveal piece by piece of the small things he remembers about his house. Even with all the things he remembers it won 't be enough to save this crazy old man. Cherry uses imagery, and diction to show a old man as he goes through the signs of Alzheimer, we see the terror he experiences as he comes home.

Alzheimer’s disease slowly steals a person’s dignity and erases precious memories. The “Alzheimer’s Disease Guide”, found on WebMD explains that tasks become more difficult to do often leading to confusion and behavior changes. The article further explains the progression of the disease also brings hardship to family and friends (1). To best cope with Alzheimer’s we must better understand the disease.

"Confusion, Anxiety, Anger and Pain, Despair" these are some of the words that Kaunie Hagensen uses to describe her condition in the poem Lost. (Hagensen 1999) These feelings are shared by many people today who suffer from, or have family members who suffer from Alzheimer's disease. The Encyclopedia of Alzheimer's Disease describes it as being, "a progressive degenerative disease characterized by the death of nerve cells in several areas of the brain. While the most obvious symptom is loss of memory, the disease also causes problems with emotional control, vision, and language." (Turkington 2003, 14) "Alzheimer's disease" has previously been used to describe dementia arising in middle age, but because of the neuropathological

“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

In most of Cherry’s poems, particularly “Alzheimer’s” lines 15-22, she sometimes reveals her most impressive passages in order to portray her life: the very being of her existence (Clabough 3). She seems to do this in most of her works so that all the thoughts and feelings of the story can be felt by those reading the works without ever having to experience the situation. In addition, she is adamant her works can and will utilize autobiographical materials to create artistic and philosophical truths on the same level as presented in “Alzheimer’s” (Chappell 257). She speaks of this autobiographical information in a commentary regarding her father’s early life, her parent’s love for music, her childhood, and her father’s diagnosis of a disease that steals his identity. Stating that hearing the diagnosis was like hearing the screeching of violin strings at her first lesson (Cherry). The first glimpse of using this type of information in an artistic form is in lines 19-22 when she vividly draws a picture of her father in his younger years. He remembers how he looked, what he wore and that his favorite pastime was music. It is also clear he remembers his home in all of its glory but not those that lived there with him.