An avalanche of information has been offered up that categorizes the fear, confusion, and befuddlement of the daily experiences of a person afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease. Words such as confusion, fear, frustration and anger are commonly employed to describe what the AD patient feels or experiences.
My question, however, is this:
Where, if anywhere, has there been someone who has been able to experience the sensory and memory degraded episodes of an AD sufferer, who was then able to reasonably report back on what that vision, that feeling, that confusion was like?
Has there been say, a professional journalist or career reporter, trained in the observational and communication arts, that has firsthand experience with AD and been able to report back as objectively as they could what the experience actually was about?
“This is Rex Fury here, reporting live for KSUX news, on the scene at the corner of Hippocampus Lane and Dentate Gyrus Way. We have just learned of a wild uncontrollable Alzheimer’s memory crash event at this location. Details are sketchy and bizarre but this is what we know at this time...”
For those of us who are caregivers, doctors, nursing home staff, and just loving family members; what exactly is the AD patient feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting and experiencing? Has anyone with AD ever been able to come forward and concisely describe what one of their disruptive sensory / memory experiences is really like?
A family member of ours presently is struggling with mild to moderate AD. One day, I was surprised to hear this person begin to talk about what it is like in experiencing a confusing and frightening AD episode. It was just the two of us and we had been enjoying a private conversation about our family. After a pause, the individual then began to verbally describe a sensory image experience that often occurred at random throughout the day while they were awake. (I’m paraphrasing what was conveyed to me here).
“It is as if you are watching a slide show of events going on around you. Most of the scenes, the people, animals and surroundings are all familiar. Then, out of the blue, a slide pops up with altered scenery. The household furnishings look different. The person I was talking to in the chair across the room suddenly has a different face, or is completely different altogether. The slide show scenes just arbitrarily and quickly jump to something unknown, strange or scary. I cannot stop the slides from appearing as they do nor can I make them go away when they do pop up. Then, without warning, the slide images return to the normal, the recognizable, the comforting.”
As a member of the Baby Boomer generation, the experiences described remind me of the after effects for someone who had taken LSD. The person had “experienced a bad trip” after dropping a dose of LSD. Thereafter, the bad or negative hallucinations or visions would reoccur in the form of “flashback experiences” which were not controllable nor preventable.
Is it possible that the areas of the brain that we now know are affected by AD, were the same ones that were affected by those that took LSD some 40 years previously?
Up to this point in time, I had not heard first hand nor read anything from an AD patient that provided a description like the “slideshow” of how AD raises havoc with one’s cognitive mind and the way it’s sensory experiences are altered.
An out of control “Slideshow” such as what was described to me would certainly unnerve and unsettle anyone else who might have it happen to them. Having it happen to myself many times every day would certainly rattle me to the core.
I now have come to possess a greater appreciation and empathy for my family member and all others who struggle with this miserable disease. I now completely understand the frown and staring off into space look that often overcomes an AD patient.
I would be doing the same damn thing!
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