During the Christmas holidays on one of the really bad days of snow we had, and there was no chance of me going outside for any reason at all, decided to spend the day watching t.v which is something I have not done since I was about 13. I think it was just after lunch when I was looking through the Sky Anytime shows that I saw the two-part documentary, Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer's. This was a program that documented how Terry Pratchett has been dealing with Alzheimer's disease, his preparations for the future as well as him finding out about the disease.
It began with him six months after he was diagnosed with it and throughout the show said just how much it had changed his life, it was here that I realised just how very little about Alzheimer's that I actually knew of, just how he explained it all started off a small tiny things such as forgetting where you put your car keys and in his case he mentioned that he hates misspelling, and never really needed to use the spell checker on his computer and then gradually he got worse and worse up till the point where he was using it all the time, and after a certain amount of time gets his assistant to type for him instead as you really saw him struggle with it.
There were two thing that made me really think about just how this can be very frustrating especially when Terry Pratchett took about 8 attempts to do his tie up and you really saw him struggle with his, this was no act, you saw just how embarrassed he looked and how frustrated he became at both himself and the disease. The next was when he visited a support group where he met other people who suffer from it, this was where he saw just the beginning of how bad it was going to get, but when he spoke to a retired professor of science who has dealt with this for a few years now so just how much strength he had gained from it, even through all the frustrating and forgetting times he sought strength from his family and friends.
I admittedly say that I barely knew anything about Alzheimer's until I saw this program, obviously I knew what it was and what it did but I never really knew what it really did to a person, juts how much it subtly affected their lives, how you forget the simplest of things, how when a person is reading they can actually see the next line jump up to the next. The feelings that people who suffer from this disease are all things I will never and hopefully will never understand, to know that you will only get worse and then one day not knowing and remembering anything such as who your family is or even who you are.
Did you even know that a person can suffer from this for 10 years before it becomes noticeable that they have it, there would be no signs for years then one day it decides to show up.
There has also been some debate recently due to the author's thoughts on assisted suicide, even though many people would disagree with it they have to understand and respect a persons decision to take this course of action as no one would like to know that they would live one day without a clue of who anyone was, this is something that I do not know whether I am with or against it, I would really need to think about it but I do however understand why a person would want to do it.
It began with him six months after he was diagnosed with it and throughout the show said just how much it had changed his life, it was here that I realised just how very little about Alzheimer's that I actually knew of, just how he explained it all started off a small tiny things such as forgetting where you put your car keys and in his case he mentioned that he hates misspelling, and never really needed to use the spell checker on his computer and then gradually he got worse and worse up till the point where he was using it all the time, and after a certain amount of time gets his assistant to type for him instead as you really saw him struggle with it.
There were two thing that made me really think about just how this can be very frustrating especially when Terry Pratchett took about 8 attempts to do his tie up and you really saw him struggle with his, this was no act, you saw just how embarrassed he looked and how frustrated he became at both himself and the disease. The next was when he visited a support group where he met other people who suffer from it, this was where he saw just the beginning of how bad it was going to get, but when he spoke to a retired professor of science who has dealt with this for a few years now so just how much strength he had gained from it, even through all the frustrating and forgetting times he sought strength from his family and friends.
I admittedly say that I barely knew anything about Alzheimer's until I saw this program, obviously I knew what it was and what it did but I never really knew what it really did to a person, juts how much it subtly affected their lives, how you forget the simplest of things, how when a person is reading they can actually see the next line jump up to the next. The feelings that people who suffer from this disease are all things I will never and hopefully will never understand, to know that you will only get worse and then one day not knowing and remembering anything such as who your family is or even who you are.
Did you even know that a person can suffer from this for 10 years before it becomes noticeable that they have it, there would be no signs for years then one day it decides to show up.
There has also been some debate recently due to the author's thoughts on assisted suicide, even though many people would disagree with it they have to understand and respect a persons decision to take this course of action as no one would like to know that they would live one day without a clue of who anyone was, this is something that I do not know whether I am with or against it, I would really need to think about it but I do however understand why a person would want to do it.
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