Still Alice
Still Alice follows one woman's journey into the world of the progressive neurodegenerative and fatal disease that is Alzheimer’s.
It shows the disease for what it really is and is at times hard to watch. Dr. Alice Howland is an highly esteemed middleaged linguistics professor at Harvard University who is at the height of her career. The movie begins at her 50th birthday party in a chic New York restaurant. She has a loving husband and three grown successful children. Alice appears to have it all, until one day she can’t find the word in lecture. It gets a little scarier after she gets lost on her daily jog. After this incident she decides to see a neurologist. After many scans and tests he determines that she has early onset Alzheimer’s. The doctor even comments on how young she is, the disease has struck nearly 15 years than when it traditionally occurs. She has a very rare form of
Alzheimer’s that presents itself even earlier, deteriorates the brain faster and is in fact, genetic. Two of her three children make the decision to take the test and one of them is positive. After her diagnosis, the disease begins to rapidly progress. She forgets names and things that just happened. She forgets about dinner plans and even misses a flight for a presentation she spent days preparing for. She gets lost in her own home and extremely disoriented anytime she leaves it. Slowly she looses the ability to take care of herself. While accepting and learning how to live with her diagnosis Alice grieves for the women she once was and could have continued to be. Its a terrifying disease and she knows it. She explains how she can actually feel herself loosing the words, thoughts and memories. She says at one point “I wish I had cancer because people have more respect for those with cancer; they wear ribbons and go on walks for people with cancer. You don’t have to feel like such a social“ Alice can’t even recall the word. This loosing of simple words
happens
It shows the disease for what it really is and is at times hard to watch. Dr. Alice Howland is an highly esteemed middleaged linguistics professor at Harvard University who is at the height of her career. The movie begins at her 50th birthday party in a chic New York restaurant. She has a loving husband and three grown successful children. Alice appears to have it all, until one day she can’t find the word in lecture. It gets a little scarier after she gets lost on her daily jog. After this incident she decides to see a neurologist. After many scans and tests he determines that she has early onset Alzheimer’s. The doctor even comments on how young she is, the disease has struck nearly 15 years than when it traditionally occurs. She has a very rare form of
Alzheimer’s that presents itself even earlier, deteriorates the brain faster and is in fact, genetic. Two of her three children make the decision to take the test and one of them is positive. After her diagnosis, the disease begins to rapidly progress. She forgets names and things that just happened. She forgets about dinner plans and even misses a flight for a presentation she spent days preparing for. She gets lost in her own home and extremely disoriented anytime she leaves it. Slowly she looses the ability to take care of herself. While accepting and learning how to live with her diagnosis Alice grieves for the women she once was and could have continued to be. Its a terrifying disease and she knows it. She explains how she can actually feel herself loosing the words, thoughts and memories. She says at one point “I wish I had cancer because people have more respect for those with cancer; they wear ribbons and go on walks for people with cancer. You don’t have to feel like such a social“ Alice can’t even recall the word. This loosing of simple words
happens