She couldn't remember to go to the bathroom when she needed to. She didn't even remember that she had any children. We cared for her, but there was little we could do but watch this disease systematically disassemble the woman I knew as my grandmother. She has nine children and a lot of grandchildren. I was around a lot while she was sick and being cared for. So by the time we figured out that she had Alzheimer's, she was pretty far along in the disease. I think she, her children, and grandchildren looked the other way for a while. My grandfather had died, and she was living alone.
It's sort of accepted in our culture that 80-year-olds forget things.
She was in her mid-eighties at the time, and she'd probably been living with the disease for a while. LG: While I was in graduate school, we discovered that my grandmother had Alzheimer disease. Genova generously made the introductory chapter available to Alzforum for a sneak preview.ĪRF: Before you wrote this book, you had completed a Ph.D. She is working on a new book with the working title Living Alzheimer's-a collection of stories about people with early onset Alzheimer disease who are living well. In between diaper changes, school drop-offs, and book events, Genova-mother of two young children-writes an online column for the national Alzheimer's Association.
"They were my litmus test," Genova said, "letting me know if what I'd written rang true." While working on the book, she exchanged e-mails daily with people around the world living with early onset dementia, whom she had met through the Dementia Advocacy and Support Network International (DASNI) and DementiaUSA. To write Still Alice, Genova read every book she could find on Alzheimer's and interviewed neurologists (one of whom she shadowed for two days at the Massachusetts General Hospital Memory Disorders Unit), general practice physicians, research scientists, genetics counselors, and social workers. Last summer-nine years after finishing her Ph.D.-Genova published Still Alice, in which she tells the story of a fictional 50-year-old Harvard professor who develops early onset Alzheimer disease. "That's what I hope to do with my writing, both fiction and non." "That's everything right there," Genova, 37, said of the quote from Sacks's book, which propelled her toward a doctorate in neuroscience. Within the pages of this bestseller she had read as an undergraduate, Lisa Genova found something more profound than a set of intriguing neurological case histories. In examining the person with disease, we gain wisdom about life."-Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Still Alice Book Cover"In examining disease, we gain wisdom about anatomy and physiology and biology. How would you like to share? Facebook Twitter LinkedIn
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