Amy Tan Quotes

The type of Alzheimer's Dad has is rare - posterior cortical atrophy or PCA - and it affects his spatial awareness and the way he judges distance. His first symptoms were erratic typing and spelling, but to talk to him, you'd never know there was a problem.

My father, who suffered from hardening of the arteries, was diagnosed as having that tragic thief of the mind, Alzheimer's.

I became demented overnight. Sudden onset is one factor that distinguishes my form of dementia from the more common form associated with Alzheimer's disease.

What really scares me is Alzheimer's or premature senility, losing that ability to read and enjoy and to write. And you do it, and some days maybe aren't so good, and then some days, you really catch a wave, and it's as good as it ever was.

A lot of people have dementia, which is great, because then they don't recognize me.

...Grandpa's mind had left us, gone wild and wary. When I walked with him I could feel how strange it was. His thoughts swam between us, hidden under rocks, disappearing in weeds, and I was fishing for them, dangling my own words like baits and lures.

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.

There is a version of Alzheimer's which is early onset Alzheimer's. And it's - it's horrible, because people do get it in their 50s and 60s. And it's terrible.

People do not realize that Alzheimer's is not old age. It is a progressive and fatal disease and staggering amounts of people develop Alzheimer's every day.

Dementia is, after all, a symptom of organic brain damage. It is a condition, a disorder of the central nervous system, brought about in my case by a viral assault on brain tissue. When the assault wiped out certain intellectual processes, it also affected emotional processes.

When you become senile, you won't know it.

With Alzheimer's, recent memory is affected first. At the start, you count the memory loss in days, then hours - then in minutes. But there's also an insidious backward creep of deterioration.

You know, I have found a new way to get high and stay spaced out for hours on end, and the government can't stop me... It's called senility.

The president was madman Reagan who's got Alzheimer's and has lost his mind. He now crawls on all fours.

I don't know a great deal about Alzheimer's - just what it does.

In my case, symptoms began to appear when I was only 57. In fact, the doctors believe early-onset Alzheimer's has a strong genetic predictor, and that it may have been progressing for some years before I was diagnosed.

The thing about Alzheimer's is that it's... it's sort of like all these little, small deaths along the way, before they actually physically die.

My grandfather said, "When you become senile, you won't know it."

For the last year his grandma had been slipping in and out of reality. One minute she was as clear as a bell and the next she was calling him Simon. Who was Simon? He had no idea.

I must admit I am nervous about getting Alzheimer's. Once it hits, I might tell my best joke and never know it.

My faculties are decaying now and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the things that never happened.

You know, as you get older, the first thing you lose is memory. It seems to be happening with me.

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.

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

When you deal with a person who's experiencing dementia, you can see where they're struggling with knowledge. You can see what they forget completely, what they forget but they know what they once knew. You can tell how they're trying to remember.