My grandfather passed from Alzheimers this summer. It is awful to say, but his passing was a relief to many, as he effectively died a couple years prior.

This disease is proof positive that there are medical fates far, far worse than death.

I lost my Grandmother in November and though she was never diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she did experience a long, sad cognitive decline. Seeing someone who was once so feisty not quite remember to change her Brita water filter was very difficult on my entire family.

Needless to say, I understand what you mean by your grandfather's passing being a relief to many. Good on you for having the courage to write that - it is a very common thing that far too many people are afraid to express.

I am sorry for your loss.

As someone about to go through this with a close relative, and with a chronic illness myself (type 1 diabetes), I often think of euthanasia. I haven't come to any conclusions yet.

Active euthanasia (stuff beyond DNR) for mental conditions is a non-starter because it is impossible to get a valid statement of the patient's preferences.

You can't write a valid living will that says "kill me if I forget who my wife is twice a day for a week".

It's a difficult problem, to be sure. I feel like what sokoloff went through is maybe not the optimal solution. I don't know.

What I went through was vanishingly small compared to my grandmother and father. It cemented in my dad a resolve to self-euthanize at the first sign of a progressive mental degradation. Of course, the first sign is "too early" to be optimal as well, but no one wants to wait until it's too late. In a strange twist of fate, he experienced this fall a temporary but rapid decline in function due to a treatable (and subsequently treated) physical condition that manifested itself over a 10 day period. Now recovered, I'm sure he's glad he didn't off himself.

I don't have any easy answer, even having had these experiences. There's little question my grandfather would not have wanted to live as he did the last 18 months of his life, but still epsilon chance he prefered whatever his life was to nothingness and even if not, was 17 or 19 a "more right" answer? How do you distinguish "routine" "what did I come downstairs for again?!" from more serious progressive degenerative diseases? Who knows...

The fungus thing is still extremely preliminary. The cause of Alzheimer's is not known.

I've seen articles that refer to it as "type 3 diabetes" or at least link it to diabetes.

Also preliminary. There are a number of hypotheses. The real answer could be one of them, or a combination of them, or something we haven't thought of yet. We simply don't know.

The problem is, it's hard to diagnose early stage Alzheimer's and it's hard to look inside the brain of a living person and see what's going on. Combine those two things and there is just so so much we don't know about the disease.

I know it's all over the place even cold sore virus I've heard is a risk.

There is diabetes on both sides of my family (I'm not diabetic) and I get cold sores too but nobody on either side of my family has or ever had Alzheimer's Disease.

My in-law were dealing with the grandmothers Alzhiemers for 4-5 years. Basically stuck in their house for the whole time to take care of her. No travel or vacations. None of their sibblings wanted to help and they just disappeared once the duties were passed to them. No public support structure for this illness in their country even.