Five years ago Scottish writer Andrea Gillies took in her buy ffxiv power leveling mother-in-law, Nancy, who was then in the midst of Alzheimer's disease. Andrea thought she could simply do what buy ff14 power leveling nurture Nancy through her difficult passageway, but just weeks after Andrea moved into a Victorian mansion with her husband, Chris; their three young children; Nancy; and Nancy's ailing husband, buy ff14 cd key Morris, the journalist encountered a much more cruel reality: Alzheimer's involves far more than memory loss or a little dementia. It's an illness that can rob you of buy ffxiv gold your very identity.
In her new memoir, "Keeper: One House, Three Generations and a Journey Through Alzheimer's," buy ffxiv gil Andrea tells the story of the crisis her family confronted -- complete with Nancy's dark moods, Nancy's unexpected rages and the gradual undoing of Nancy's grasp on reality. As her brain was pared away by the debilitating disease, Nancy, a cheap ff14 gil former secretary and loving grandmother, no longer knew who she was or why she was with her family. The entire cheap ffxiv gold ordeal left Andrea with two questions: What exactly is the self, and does identity even exist without memory?
AOL Health: In your buy ff14 gil memoir, "Keeper," you explore how identity and memory are connected. What did you discover about identity as you cared for your mother-in-law, Nancy?
Andrea Gillies: I had always tried to hold cheap ff14 gold onto the idea of myself as immutable, not possible to change. I thought that getting older was a process of adding on to who you are. So ff14 power level it was terrifying and educational to come across a situation in which Nancy's self was being whittled away by a disease. I've had to learn that if we have souls, they must be different from our conscious selves -- and thus, they're not something ff14 power level we know about. Through disease, Nancy had become a different person. So a self is a biological thing. A personality is a biological buy ff14 time card thing. I could no longer think of my soul and myself as the same thing. That was a hard lesson to learn.
ff14 gil My core self -- not how others perceive me, but the million little things that I say to myself -- can get taken away by dementia. Nancy buy ff14 gil was left with one certainty: She knew she was from Edinburgh and that she was called Nancy. That was it. So if Nancy has a soul that will survive buy ffxiv gold death, then it is hidden from her conscious self.
AOL Health: Why is that terrifying to you?
AG: Because I'm a passenger on this journey, and I can't imagine ff14 gil anything more frightening than your brain shutting buy ffxiv gil down on you, department by department, and you being aware of it. When Nancy lived with us, she was frightened, and she looked to me for buy ffxiv gil help. I was the person who spent most days with her. She'd knock her hand against her forehead and say to me, "I know that something's terribly wrong. What is it? Please help me." There was nothing I ffxiv cd key could do for her.
Alzheimer's has become the disease that is most feared by people -- more so than even cancer or heart disease. People are becoming more aware of what ff14 cd key Alzheimer's does to a person and his or her family and ffxiv cd key how distressing that is. It's a disease of identity. So it has completely different implications than dying of heart disease or cancer. ffxiv cd key When you have cancer, you still know who you are.
AOL Health: What was the first sign final fantasy xiv key Nancy had Alzheimer's -- and what age was she then?
cheap ffxiv cd key AG: Twelve years ago when Nancy was 71, we noticed that she was forgetting things. She and her husband, Morris, were living in a retirement flat in Edinburgh, Scotland, and my husband, Chris, and I were living 150 miles away. ffxiv time card We visited with our three children every couple months, and we became a bit alarmed when we saw that she had trouble with sequential steps. final fantasy xiv cd key For instance, she would boil water in the kettle, but then she couldn't really think of what to do next to make coffee. Or she would wash the dishes in cold water and then be surprised that anyone thought that was odd. She ff14 cd key began to forget where the keys were kept and how to unlock the door.
buy ffxiv cd key We asked her husband how she was doing, and he said, "She started going to a memory clinic, and they put her on some ffxiv item pills." Because we'd never had any experience with Alzheimer's, buy ffxiv time card we had no idea what that meant. We just thought she was old. We were very naive.
AOL Health: When did you get the official Alzheimer's ffxiv item diagnosis?
AG: In 2000, Nancy had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's at the memory clinic, but my husband and I weren't told. And if they told Nancy, it was obviously a cheap ffxiv cd key categorical mistake because she didn't remember. Her husband was probably told, but my theory is that he ffxiv key wanted to protect everybody, including himself. He didn't talk about it. He [would say,] "Oh, she's fine. She's just got ff14 cd key memory problems." Later, in 2004, a doctor happened to mention what had been in Nancy's medical record for five years: She had Alzheimer's disease. It was rather buy ffxiv cd key shocking to hear that.
Up until that point, we'd had no contact with anyone [who had] dementia, so we had no idea what the symptoms were. And very often, the first sign of buy ffxiv cd key Alzheimer's isn't memory loss; it's trouble navigating. Nancy was having trouble finding things in the house and you and buy ffxiv item remembering how to get to the supermarket. For a decade, Morris did the supermarket shopping. Looking back, that was significant, but at the time, ff14 item we thought it was just Nancy's quirk.