T6 - Story

Alzheimer disease
We remember days, moments.
We remember a million feelings, a thousand thoughts ,a hundred faces.
We remember behaviors, fine motor skills.
Memories...defines our personality.
What happens, if you can´t remember?


Alzheimer is a neurodegenerative illness and the most common form of dementia.
It causes problems with thinking, memory and behavior. The majority of the affected people are
65 years old, but it can appear earlier or later. Each person is unique that´s why everyone make their own experiences in alzheimer. The disease is splitted in 7 stages. It´s difficult to know in which step the affected person is because the steps can overlap.
Stage 1: No cognitive disturbances.The illness damages already the brain without showing any symptoms.
Stage 2: Very mild cognitive disturbances. The Affected person forgets words and has difficulty recalling events that happened recently.
Stage 3: Mild cognitive disturbances. Family, Friends and employers note the first difficulties. Recognizable difficulties by the implementation of duties in working-life and social life
Stage 4: Moderate cognitive disturbances No orientation, they are losing track of the day or date, they becoming confused about the surrounding area. Forgetfulness with own, personal past.
Stage 5: Moderate strong cognitive disturbances.There appear Remarkable blackouts.
Some affected persons start to need assistance at everyday activities.
Stage 6: Strong cognitive disturbances. The memory is getting worse. Furthermore a personality change can appear and people need extensive help at everyday activities.
Stage 7: Very strong cognitive disturbances. In this last step the person loses the ability to confide in his or her surrounding area, to take part of a conversation and to control movements.

Story: Will you remember me ?

My Name is Isabel I´m 19 Years old and will I tell you the story of my grandfather’s disease.
He lives in Ibiza, in Never never land house and we always visit him. He loves nature, that´s why he chose to live in this house.

A few years ago my mother and me went to visit him during our holidays. Everything was fine but than the symptoms appeared step by step. First my Grandfather forgot the keys, but we thought it was normal because that also happens to everybody. But then he began forgetting lots of simple things as locking the door, closing the windows but someday he started to forget to take off the hotplate. When he told me his old stories which I had already heard a thousand times, he forgot many parts and always broke up in the middle because he couldn´t remember.
It was conspicuous.
My mum took him to the doctor who couldn´t see anything .
After a while we got a call: he had get lost in the city and couldn´t find the way home. After that happened we took him again to the doctor, Now he had an assumption: Alzheimer.
That changed everything. As he lived alone my mum has now to take care of him, she is always there to control everything. At the beggining, I didn´t see my mum very often and our family was splitted in two parts. When I visited him again he was in a very bad mood and isolated himself from us. He didn´t act normal like I had always known him. He always called for my grandmother and asked me where she was but she had died five years before. Everything happened so fast that the doctor said that he could take medicine but that only delays the illness. My mother was very stressed, therefore my whole family moved to his home. We had to change lot of things at the house because it was very dangerous for him. Now, he cannot live alone anymore. He needs his family and a safety home. Sometimes, he behaves normal but then like a foreign person. He is not himself anymore. He makes so many mistakes and always forgets everything very fast. We can´t stop the illness but we will be there and we will take care of him.