Dr. Joseph Sirven: November Is Alzheimer's Disease Awareness Month

By Dr. Joseph Sirven
Published: Wednesday, November 12, 2014 - 8:18am
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Dr. Joseph Sirven
Dr. Joseph Sirven

One in eight Americans are projected to contract Alzheimers by 2020. Here’s KJZZ commentator Dr. Joesph Sirven.


On a late evening consultation to the emergency room, I pulled back the privacy curtain to find a disheveled and anxious older man eyeing me suspiciously. He looked up after I greeted him and asked me angrily, “Who are you? What am I doing here?... then pleaded, “You gotta get me out!”  In the corner of the room an older, noble and visibly tired woman stepped forward, “You’ve got to help my husband, please; anything to calm him.”

This heartbreaking scenario is frighteningly common. He was on his sixth admission for Alzheimer’s-related agitation. I tell this story because November is both Alzheimer’s disease Awareness Month, as well as National Family Caregivers Month. Designated by President Ronald Reagan, who suffered from the disease, we are reminded of the rapidly growing public health problem that dementia has become. With one in eight Americans projected to contract Alzheimer’s by 2020, Arizona is expected to have 172,000 cases by that year. And this will affect the nearly 15 million family members and friends who unwittingly are transformed into unpaid caregivers.

Dementias are incurable neurodegenerative diseases that rob the person of their identity by attacking their memory and language. This metamorphosis creates cataclysmic challenges within families that are both mundane and profound. Issues from deciding who helps with feeding and toileting to exploring the meaning of our identities when a parent can’t recognize their own child often surface.

I’ve personally ridden the dementia roller coaster three times. First, my grandmother, then my mother, and my wife’s father, and I wish I could tell you that I found something positive about the trip, but that would be a lie. Instead, I first hoped for a merciful end and then felt guilty about it and ultimately I pined for those relatives when they were gone. Patrick Modiano is this year’s winner of the Nobel prize for literature. His book is about memory problems and I think this passage sums it up.

“Do not all lives dissolve into the evening…where one’s identity is ephemeral as the sand holds the traces of our footsteps but a few moments.”  Dementia forces you to accept this reality regardless of whether you’re ready for it.

So to answer my ER patient’s question, who am I? I’m a son. I’m a son-in-law. I’m a grandson of someone with dementia. And I’m a doctor who desperately needs to end these Alzheimer’s journeys once and for all by making you aware. Now you know.

Dr. Joseph Sirven is a KJZZ commentator and the Chairman of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic.