Alzheimer's Disease In Still Alice

Still Alice is a novel about a Harvard psychology professor, named Alice Howland, who began to experience early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease after her 50th birthday. The novel focuses on the progress of the disease and how it began to affect her everyday life. It began when she had difficulties remembering information for a presentation she was presenting. Another time she was jogging in her neighborhood and was not able to find her way back home. She also had a hard time remembering course material that she was suppose to teach at the University that she had just prepared right before class. Things progressively got more and more difficult for Alice making her believe it was a symptom of menopause. Eventually, Alice began to feel that the loss of her memory was taking control of her life.
Alice was going through a very hard time accepting the fact that she might be experiencing a form of memory loss. At first, she chose not to tell her husband about what was going on and wanted to handle it on her own. Eventually, she shared what was …show more content…
70% of dementia cases are Alzheimer’s disease. Adults with this disease have a hard time finishing daily routines, solving problems, and orienting to time and place (Smallfield, 2017). As seen in Still Alice, symptoms usually advance slowly. The risk factor for this disease is increasing age. The 6th leading cause of death in the United States is Alzheimer’s disease (“Alzheimer's Disease,” n.d.). Those with Alzheimer’s disease have a loss of brain cells and neurons. No cure has been found and it is completely irreversible (Jenson & Padilla, 2017). Researchers have found different ways to treat it, some in which consists of medications and non medications. The cause of this disease is unknown but it is identified to have a genetic tie and can be found with genetic testing. Many people believe Alzheimer’s disease is a gradual death of the