MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin - Re: Possible update...

> To me Alzheimers is the most terrifying. It's the opposite. Imagine slowly losing
> your past day by day. During the early stages you know that you're losing your mind,
> and you get to watch it go. Front row seat.

That one is pretty bad, too. I worked with/for a woman, an author, who suffered from it. When I first met her, it was just part of her personality, she was just Scatterbrain Jane. I would maintain her computer and teach her how to use it, she would retain some small part of what I taught her, and eventually I'd have to go back and show her again. I think it comforted her to have someone to come in periodically and set everything right, and I made some decent beer money from the gig. I never "officially" knew it was Alzheimer's, but it became increasingly obvious as time went on. She would retain less and less of what I showed her, and I had to devise increasingly foolproof systems to keep her up and running.

The last time I saw her, she was starting research on a new book, and was frantic because her files were "randomly disappearing". I was trying to talk her down over the phone, but I finally agreed to walk over to her office on my lunch break to take a look. There was absolutely nothing wrong with the machine. Her documents folder was just a clusterfuck of files saved wily-nilly, each with a few sentences or a paragraph or two. She would start a document, write down a few thoughts, save it, and then couldn't find it, so she'd start over with a new one. I tried to explain to her what was going on and how to fix it, but I just wasn't getting through. I remember her just looking miserable and saying, "I used to be able to do this, why is it so hard now?" What do you even say to that? I didn't know for sure that she had Alzheimer's, and even if I did, it wasn't my place to try to explain it to her.

After that, I never heard from her again. A couple of years later, I googled her name just out of curiosity and found her obituary. She'd moved into an assisted living facility not long after the last time I saw her, and a few months later she was gone. Yeah, it's a pretty horrible disease.