Monterey, CA Alzheimer's Disease Takes The Ultimate Toll On Renowned Psychology At Cornell University

There was a heart wrenching story in today’s edition of The New York Times about Sandy Bem, a well-known psychology professor at Cornell University who watched an HBO documentary called “The Alzheimer’s Project” at the age of 64 and realized that she might have this terrible disease.  After being tested by a neurologist, she was diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) which he said would probably progress to full-blown Alzheimer’s disease within ten years.  Sandy described the feeling of terror as she envisioned her disease progressing and decided on the spot that she was going to take her own life.  She wrote a journal in which she described the maddening capriciousness of a mind that could be so alive one moment with thought and feeling building toward a next step, and then someone erases the blackboard.  “It’s all gone and I can’t even reconstruct what the topic was.  It’s just gone.  And I sit with the dark, the blank,” wrote Bem.  She told her neurologist, “I want to live only for as long as I continue to be myself.”  Unfortunately, her physician’s prognosis was optimistic; just a year and a half after her diagnosis her MCI turned into full-blown Alzheimer’s.  A few months before her 70^th birthday, Sandy decided it was time after her daughter came to see her and she asked a friend who that person’s mother was.  She was told that she was.  Emily was her daughter.  “I thought so.  I thought it might be me,” she said.  Her family had a celebration of life party for her a week before she took her own life. The story is so sad because Alzheimer’s impacts millions of people and there is no cure for this disease.  I watched my father and my grandmother go through the various stages and it’s very bleak.  I am proud to have raised nearly $100,000 for the Alzheimer’s Association and will be walking in their annual fundraiser on September 26 in honor of my father and my grandmother.