Down The Memory Lane

Volume 7 Issue 9 September, 2017

An Ode to silent Sufferers of Alzheimer’s disease

Prof. Alois Alzheimer is described as the chain cigar-smoking psychiatrist-clinical researcher who was fond of “spending evenings and nights at the microscope.”

Request took me to go up and down the memory lane and I recognized that beginning was made in the year of 1977-78 when optimism and enthusiasm was stronger and zest to acquire the knowledge and skill to manage such a disorder was powerful.

Appreciation about my first lecture on Dementias from the Dias shared by then the first Geriatrician, in one of the medical colleges in Chennai, by my Professor Dr. A. Venkoba Rao took me further.

Time and tide move further, now when I sat, with a detached attitude, to collect and consolidate the ideas, two things emerged strongly. First, very little advances in understanding about this disorder are made. Management of cases of Dementia has made me humble, actively-passive observing of on-going natures and devastating insult of the brain leading to psycho-socio-physical disease”.

The erasing of emotions to total apathy, looking at everything in life as a new event, unable to communicate and share their feelings and ideas as “ the fountain of life is slowly dying away”, entering into a second childhood where adamancy, dependency on others, not aware of their identity perplexing their kith and kin who are at a loss to find a solution, seeks a clinician who can talk for hours on the disease but can offer very few measures to arrest the disease process is the common scenario – a challenge to modern Hi-Fi world. This scenario if introspected by one and all on this day enables all clinicians to shun their arrogance of being self proclaimed “God” and bow in front of powerful life full of enigma. Humbleness, sympathetic and empathetic feeling makes him to tell “I serve and Nature does what is destined for that person”. This is possible only when this issue is viewed from the dimension of Spirituality (important for the caretaker and totally absent in the sufferer of Dementia).

The ideal approach to this disease would be Physico-Psycho-Socio-Spiritual.

This is another point to prove that “Health is Wealth” and Prevention is better than Cure.

What is in store for us in the Pandora’s Box, only time will tell.