Suggested Reading: Still Alice

Still Alice

By Lisa Genova
PhD in neuroscience from Harvard University

Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease.

Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, and inspiring. As her cognitive capabilities diminish, we also get to see her grow.  As her symptoms worsen, Alice loses her cerebral life at Harvard, where she'd placed her worth and identity, where she'd been valued and respected.  Without it, she embarks on a desperate search for answers to questions like 'Who am I now?' and 'How do I matter?'
 

http://www.stillalice.com/

My aunt Barbara shipped me a copy of Still Alice as she felt it would give me another take on Alzheimer's and its effects.  I have been happily working at JADP for almost a year and have grown very fond of our participants, their families and caregivers.  Part of my journey to find this position was to care for my grandmother in Florida the summer of 2009. 

This was a jarring, very eye opening experience to me as my grandmother did not recognize me.  I was a complete stranger in charge of her care.  I had not been warned as to how far advanced her disease was.  It was a very emotional stay, but it set me in a new direction when I returned to Colorado.  I am so blessed to have found JADP, and feel like I am part of such impactful work.  In reading this book, Still Alice, I was immediately drawn in.  It is a third person narrative, yet speaks through Alice's perspective. 

Alice is a strong, independent and intelligent woman fighting a degenerative disease.  To see and hear how Alzheimer's affects the brain processes and how Alzheimer's progresses, it was heartbreaking, but incredibly insightful.  You could see the drops in thought, the glitches, but also understand how they happen. 

I could suddenly understand some of the things that my grandmother would say or do.  It heightened my already sensitive level of compassion.  I found that I could not put the book down.  I finished reading it, and though it was the wee hours of the morning, I proceeded to re-read my detailed journal entries from my stay with my grandmother.  And I cried, reliving my moments of frustration and love through my experience, and I cried for Alice, a woman I feel I know very well. 

I strongly recommend this book to all adults, especially to those who have ever known someone with Alzheimer's.

-Allison; JADP Administrative Assistant