I have only known Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia-related conditions at one remove. The extended members of my family with dementia always lived so far away that I could only see their decline from a distance, if at all. This distance extended to my understanding of the condition and its consequences because, in my mind, even knowing about this terrifying disease might be bad luck. And then there is my mother, currently 84 years of age, who fears that each of her “senior’s moments” is a symptom of the beginning of the disease. While these are irrational reactions to Alzheimer’s and dementia-related conditions, they are probably typical.
Margaret Lock, in her book—so appropriately entitled The Alzheimer Conundrum: Entanglements of Dementia and Aging—quotes from a famous Alzheimer’s researcher, Zaven Khachaturian. He provides the most succinct and unflinching description of the disease I have come...Greg Marchildon is Ontario Research Chair in Health Policy and System Design at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health and the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. He is also the Founding Director of the North American Observatory on Health Systems and Policies.
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