Earlier this year I lost my grandmother, an amazingly strong and inspiring woman. So many aspects of this loss really upset me; the accepting of a changed woman, her inability to even recall my name, and the love my mother showed to take up elderly care as a second full-time profession in order to spend more time with her. Through all this I was overwhelmed with one emotion in particular, the feeling of sympathy. For us it was a terrible few years, but what many people often ignore is the reality of how horrible the disease can be for the sufferers. While Alzheimer sufferers often display frustration, anger, violence, we fail to take note of how hard it is for them.
Nationally renowned expert on Alzheimer's 'Teepa Snow explains the feelings that the patients go through, in a way that we can all understand. For example, take the feeling of embarrassment. Snow uses the feeling of being asked a question in class at school and within the silence of the other thirty kids, you have to embarrassingly admit you don't know the answer. “We remember the feeling of our collar tightening, voice faltering, palms sweating, and face blushing.” This feeling is likened to the everyday experiences of someone with Alzheimers, "in a giant classroom every day, one in which he or she never has the exact answer.”
The expert continues to provide similar examples for every feeling about which they write — loss, isolation and
loneliness, sadness, confusion, worry and anxiety, frustration, fear, paranoia, and anger. For the first time in my
many years of seeing my grandmother suffer and feeling frustrated, I can finally begin to understand just a little
bit of what it must feel like to have this disorder.
I have decided to donate 20% of the proceeds from my Safari Exhibition to The Alzheimer's Society, as a
contribution towards my fundraising for the Marathon I am running this September in Berlin.
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