Have you ever forgot familiar words or names or the location of keys, eyeglasses or other everyday objects? According to the Seven Stages of Alzheimer’s Disease from www.alz.org, the Alzheimer’s Association, this is the typlical symptom of the Second stage of Alzheimer.
Recently I have read a book “Jan’s Story” by Barry Petersen. Barry’s wife has an early onset of Alzheimer at age 55. But during the early stages. Barry had not taken the opportunity to go to places where they always wanted to go, do things that they had longed to do because Barry thought he still have “time”. However, Alzheimer’s disease really do not have a timeline and full of unknown, the disease can progress suddenly without any warning. Barry regretted a lot but who does not. I guess regarding this, Barry is not alone. We always put up things that we think we still have time, aren’t we?
There is also another debatable issue that despite Barry and Jan had married for 20 years and love each others ever since, Barry was encouraged to look for a new partner, another sole mate. This would be extremely difficult if Barry was in the Chinese society. Traditional Chinese values eternal love and that eternal love means loyalty. Barry should not physically depart his wife not mentioning mentally. Barry also spells out clearly the meaning of marriage that is there is love between husband and wife and they take care each others, be each other’s soulmate. This is a pretty high standard to uphold and I think at least 50% of married couples had not reached. Many couples are together out of needs but not out of love. At least this is true to one of my friends’.
What is your opinion regarding this? If you have time, I would recommend you to read this book Jan’s Story by Barry Petersen which will come out in June 15, 2010. (The one I read is Advance Reader’s Edition , meaning not finalized in editing and I bought it from the Main Library in San Francisco.)
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