Still Alice by Lisa Genova

This book has been on my shelf for several years, waiting patiently for me to be ready to read it.

    

The story is told from the point of view of Alice, a professor at Harvard. She is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. We watch as she and her family struggle with the diagnosis. We watch as she loses her capability to remember and process things as she descends into dementia.

I watched my mom descend into dementia too, which is why I knew this book would be hard and why it's taken me seven years to read it.

My mom's situation was slightly different, just as everyone's experience with any illness is unique. My mom had a stroke in August of 2003. At the time she'd been living alone, managing her very brittle diabetes with frequent blood sugar checks and administering her own insulin at each meal by determining the appropriate dose based on her blood sugar levels.

The stroke affected her memory, judgment and language. When she was in the hospital right after the stroke, and my brother and I were with her, she asked why people kept sticking her with pins. She didn't remember that she even had diabetes, let alone that she had been managing it on her own. At that moment, my brother and I knew that that was the end of her living alone.

In the following year and a half, she recovered some memory and language, and reached somewhat of a plateau. She remembered that she had diabetes, but couldn't remember exactly how to manage it.

And then her memory started getting worse. Her neurologist started her on Aricept and Nameda, just like Alice did in the book, but they didn't seem to help much. Every time we saw the neurologist, she'd administer the ten question test, asking mom if she knew where she was, knew who the president was, knew what season it was. Mom did worse every time.

This was abnormal from a stroke recovery point of view. They did an MRI and she hadn't had another "event" (stroke). Dementia seemed to be setting in. The neurologist didn't make the diagnosis of Alzheimer's. At some point, she said, dementia is dementia, no matter what the cause.

For my mom the dementia progressed relatively quickly. In the last three months of her life she forgot how to use the bathroom. She forgot who we were. She talked about waiting for her parents (who had been dead for decades) coming to come pick her up. At the end, she slipped into a coma and died a few days later.

It was heartbreaking to watch my mom lose her memory, her faculties, and ultimately her life.

It's hard for anyone close to someone with dementia, as Still Alice illustrates so well. Lisa Genova sheds light on Alzheimer's and living with dementia, illuminating the struggle for Alice herself, as well as her family. Well done.

Several years ago, I wrote a blog post about two other books about dementia, The 36-Hour Day and Contented Dementia. You can read that post here (sorry for the copying and pasting): http://notthenewyorktimesbookreview.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-do-you-spell-alzheimers.html

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Customers 28

A man, maybe mid 30's, face stubbly, wearing jeans and a t-shirt came up to the information desk. "Can you help me? I read every night to my daughter, and we just finished A WRINKLE IN TIME and THE PRINCESS BRIDE. Do you have any recommendations with what I might read with her next?"

"How old is she?" I asked.

"She's 8," he said.

Handy that I taught third grade which is made up of mostly 8 year olds. I had a few ideas. "Have you read the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA with her?" I asked. "They are great and kind of along the fantasy vein."

"Well, she's seen the movies," he said. "Are the books good?" He seemed doubtful.

"They are great," I said. "Though if she's seen the movies...well, I think the books are really great. Maybe, though, you want to do something else with her if she's seen the movies."

I walked over to one of the young reader bays. "How about THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH?" I handed him a copy. "I love this book. I loved it as a kid and I love it now. My brother and I read it many many times when we were kids. I read it out loud to my third graders when I was teaching. I would take this book to a desert island, even now," I said.

"Wow," he said. He read the back of the book. "A tollbooth...hmmm..." he mused. "Okay." He kept reading. "This sounds perfect. Really, this looks great! I think we'll really like this! Thank you so much for your help!"

     


I'm glad he took THE PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH...I had more ideas if he didn't like that one...MRS. FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH, the REDWALL series...


I have added CONTENTED DEMENTIA as one of my staff recommendations. There are now more than 100 copies in the warehouses, so maybe I will be able to handsell 100 copies of this as well as SCENT OF THE MISSING!

A customer brought CONTENTED DEMENTIA to the register to purchase it.

      

"This is wonderful," I said.

"Oh, have you read it?" she asked.

"I'm the one who wrote the blurb for it on the Staff Recommends bay," I told her. "It's a really different way of looking at people with dementia, and I really like the approach."

"Yes, it looks interesting." Then she asked, "Have you read STILL ALICE?"

      

"No, I haven't been able to read it. My mother had dementia before she died. It's just been too hard for me to read that one," I answered.

She looked at me. "It is fiction," she said.

"I know that it's fiction. It still hits too close to home for me because of my mother," I said. "I've been able to read some other novels about people with dementia...TURN OF MIND, EVENING...but I just haven't been able to read STILL ALICE. Every time I've started it, it's brought up memories of my own mother."

The woman pursed her lips and almost shook her head in disapproval. "Well it's really an excellent book."

"I've only heard good things about it," I said.

She still bought the book, I thought for a minute that she was going to change her mind because I hadn't read STILL ALICE. Yet.

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