Why Alzheimer's Disease

For my semester topic, I was hoping to delve into research on Alzheimer’s disease. A disease that commonly effects the elderly, Alzheimer’s is something close to me because my Grandpa had both Alzheimer’s and Dementia. Being around someone with Alzheimer’s and Dementia can be difficult for family members to grasp emotionally, as the diagnosed person will often stop remembering anything from their short term memory. With the disease worsening over time, they may: forget names of friends and family members, ask a same question multiple times, have difficulty with speaking clearly and formulating sentences, have loss of motivation and hygiene, and also suffer from disorientation.
All of these downfalls are effects that my Grandpa, and the rest of our family, saw during the time of his sickness. On October 31^st of 2014 at the age of 80, he passed away after suffering cardiac arrest. A few days prior, my uncle (his son) had taken Grandpa to a doctor’s appointment and then to a fast-food lunch afterwards. While sitting and eating in the car, my Grandpa starting coughing, spitting up phlegm, and passed out. My uncle then immediately headed for the hospital, running several red lights in the process. Only afterwards did doctors discover that my Grandpa’s heart had been stopped for a duration of the car ride, plus the time it took to get him into the hospital. The doctors resuscitated his heart but this only brought him back into a coma. The severity of this cardiac arrest and the 8-10 minutes his heart was stopped caused great damage to his brain. He was hooked up to a ventilator for tests over several days, and during this time his heart stopped again and again, stroke after stroke. Doctors told us they weren’t sure how long he would live after being taken off the ventilator. They weren’t sure if his brain stem was strong enough to keep his brain alive, even though his organs were still functioning.

Unfortunately, I was not able to be present for any of this. As my family lives in Orange County, California, my home town, there was no way for me to fly back in time in order to say my goodbyes. My mom called me while I was at work and told me everything that had happened. She had been at the hospital for several hours already and continued to stay there throughout that first night. Knowing there was nothing I could do or say destroyed me. My Grandpa ended up holding on for just about three days. I called every day to check in and make sure I was up to date on what was happening. Eventually, my mom was the one to call me and tell me that he had passed away in the night. As peaceful as it was, it was emotionally damaging to me that I did not get to be there with the rest of my family and even more, that I was separated from them and had to deal with the situation on my own.

When I came back home for Thanksgiving break, my family and I held a memorial service at my Aunt’s house. My Grandpa was a singer who modeled his style after Frank Sinatra, and so the theme of the service collaborated all of his favorite things, including his recordings of Sinatra’s records. Hearing his voice sing so happily at his service was hard to hear, but made me think of the good memories. I’ve never had anyone in my family pass away before him and although it was a peaceful passing, I still am emotional over not having been able to say goodbye to someone who had been there all the years of my life.
In this, I hope to find the answer on several questions I have about Alzheimer’s. I want to know more about this disease in general, but I also wonder if it is genetic, if it can be prevented and how it is caused. Because it accounts for so many deaths among the elderly (2010: 486,000 deaths, Wikipedia) it’s a social and medical issue that’s very prevalent today. It’s also one of the most financially costly diseases. Alzheimer’s and Dementia are common in the elderly community and any developed research or change could help the state of these diseases in the future.