Floyd Skloot Quotes

I had gone through a mother having dementia in the last couple of years of her life. She was in a nursing facility in my little hometown area of northern Illinois, so I got to see a lot of other patients there in various stages of the disease. I had a firsthand exposure to it in a pretty big way.

I originally got very interested in memory in high school when my grandmother came to live with us. She had been diagnosed with dementia. It was the first time I had heard the word 'Alzheimer's disease.'

I do mean this - I had the good fortune of being around a number of Alzheimer's patients in the last three years of my mother's life. She was in a care facility that was devoted to just people with memory-loss issues. I found those people engaging and generous in ways that I had not imagined.

I loved my husband very much, and it was heartbreaking to have him develop Alzheimer's disease, and to stand by and watch him decline in his ability to take care of himself.

As a physician, I treated hundreds of patients who needed long-term care, including ones with Alzheimer's.

I think everyone knows someone who's battling with dementia or caring for a relative affected by it. I've been staggered by how commonplace it is.

Dementia is quite unlike cancer or heart disease or any of those other conditions where you bargain with God for a cure or even just a bit more time.

None of us wants to be reminded that dementia is random, relentless, and frighteningly common.

My mother, who died aged 82, had Alzheimer's. Losing your memory is bad enough, but everything shuts down. You can't remember how to eat or go to the toilet. It's a terrible disease and so distressing to watch it take over someone you love.

My mother had early-onset Alzheimer's, and it took her four years to die. She was only 44; I was 14.

Australia is already a world leader in dementia research, treatment and care.

Dementia is our most-feared illness, more than heart disease or cancer.

I have a particular passion and focus on Alzheimer's and diseases of dementia. There's just so much scientifically that we don't know, and we can know.

My mother passed away of complications of dementia. As you get older, it really makes you realize how many people are touched by this disease.

My God. If I had known I was going to live this long, I would’ve taken better care of myself.... Since the alternative [to living with Alzheimer's Disease] is being dead, I am quite happy where I am.

If I really lose the rest of my memory, don't let my kids spend a lot of money to put me in an expensive care facility. If they treat me very well there, I will not remember it, and if they treat me badly I will not remember that either. So it really won't matter, will it?

I don't want to give up living, because I enjoy it so much, and I love working - I don't expect I'll ever have to stop. But Alzheimer's or something like that would render me pretty useless.

When you're 89, dementia develops. I mean, I've told a story onstage, and I'm telling it with a full heart, and I forgot the damn punch line.

My biggest fear is losing memory because memory is what we are. Your very soul and your very reason to be alive is tied up in memory.

One of the great changes wrought by the increased public awareness of Alzheimer's - and thank you, Nancy Reagan, you wonderful tough old dame, you - is that people in the early stages of the disease are now speaking out while they still have the capacity to do so.

My husband is stricken with dementia, and it's a trick of his condition that events and people from his past are more real to him than what happened five minutes ago.

Although there have been warnings that it was coming for years, the Alzheimer's epidemic is here now and millions more families will be touched by this progressive - and ultimately fatal - disease unless its course can be altered.

Ronald Reagan's well documented final battles with Alzheimer's disease were fought with the same conviction and courage that his many public battles were fought.

Can I remember exactly when I 'lost' my husband? Was it the moment when I had to start tying his shoelaces for him? Or when we stopped being able to laugh with each other? Looking back, that turning point is impossible to pinpoint. But then, that's the nature of dementia.

We hope we can slow or possibly reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer's.