Of the 2 diseases that would cause me to seriously contemplate suicide-- Lou Gehrig's is one, and this is the other. When you take away everything else from a man (or woman), he (or she) still has his (or her) memories. What happens, though, when you take away even those? What is left of the person that was, his (or her) humanity? Lou Gehrig's I've experienced personally (my father's best friend died from this; actually, from what I've heard, he committed a sort of suicide by not allowing himself to be treated when he contracted a respiratory infection) and it's horrible. I've never really experienced personally someone with Alzheimer's, but it sounds truly awful, and hopeless. Obviously, at some point, when almost all memory is gone, it's less horrible to the person suffering from it than it is for the people around him (or her), his (or her) friends and loved ones. Still, during the process when the person suffering from the disease knows they have it and can notice what they are irretrievably losing...it has to be horrible, and immensely sad. A friend of mine thinks his father has the beginnings of it (his father refuses to go to a doctor for an evaluation), and there has to be that worry within my friend that maybe someday he too will "get" it. After all, from what I've read, it's a genetic disease (or at least can be).
One of the downsides of my reconnection with my genetic relatives (long story short-- I'm adopted, was contacted by my birth mother nearly 10 years ago, and have developed a very good relationship with most of my genetic relatives) is that my health history is not good. Heart attacks, alcoholism, cancer, macular degeneration, even a disease I never heard of before--- hemochromatosis (a doctor did a test on me, and even though I don't have the disease, I do have the gene for it, and need to be re-tested periodically for the rest of my life, I guess). One thing that doesn't seem to be in the family background in terms of disease is Alzheimer's (or Lou Gehrig's) and for that, I'm truly thankful.