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From the bedside: “A terrified witness to the future.” A baby boom generation wake‐up call
Author(s) -
Comer Meryl
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2006.02.002
Subject(s) - witness , boom , citation , computer science , telecommunications , media studies , library science , law , sociology , political science , engineering , environmental engineering
s f o I am a former TV journalist, not a scientist, nor a neuologist or a gerontologist. Why do my personal observaions warrant a place in a scientific journal? Let’s just say I ave put in more than a decade of “on the job training” and real time testing” of the latest therapies designed to slow he progression of a disease that will ravage the baby boom eneration. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a pending epidemic greater nd deadlier than a flu pandemic. No one survives its onlaught. The blessing of our greater longevity turns perverse nd clouded by the growing risk of Alzheimer’s disease. tudies show that those who get the disease have the bio arker in them between 10 to 20 years before exhibiting ny symptoms. We are ticking time bombs without even nowing it. How ironic that the generation that wouldn’t rust anyone over age 30 and still embraces youth is now uccumbing to a scourge linked to age. While you are in the laboratories and clinics searching or new AD therapies and protocols, I am at the bedside rying to manage symptoms and grotesque behaviors, ained by the cruel realities of a disease for which there is urrently no cure. At night I slip between the bed covers, careful not to isturb the stranger lying there. His eyes are closed, but I ake no chances. He is aware of me but does not know me. turn into him and begin to breathe in a slow steady rhythm hat mesmerizes him into a temporary slumber. I have earned to succeed where drugs have failed. The reprieve ill be short and the night long. Soon he will wake screamng and flailing his arms as if fighting off demons. The terror f his world is my world: I am his captive and victim to a nce brilliant, but now demented mind. Any challenge is elf-defeating and useless; I play to his realities in order to urvive. Exhausted, I drift off only to reawaken and find