Sir, - I commend Kathryn Holmquist on an informative and thought-provoking article (Health, September 25th) on the most distressing and destructive disease that is Alzheimer's. As the daughter of a woman whose life whose life was cut short by this merciless force, I was surprised to read that the majority of people believe that patients should be informed about their condition.
Some of my earliest memories of my mother, a vibrant and passionate woman, centre on images of laughter and mischief-making. Beneath her warm demeanour lay a shrewd businesswoman, who managed not only a newsagency and household, but was captain of the Tipperary camogie team in the early 1960s.
To witness the initial effects of Alzheimer's would soften the hardest of hearts. To see someone doubt themselves and their actions as their suspicions are aroused is torturous. My mother's tears when unable to perform the simplest of tasks, her frustration at finding the milk jug in the oven, and her desperation in asking me to label the doors and presses, will always be with me.
Thankfully, my mother's decline was extraordinarily fast; her retreat into her own world and her release in death offer my sister and I some comfort that at least she remained unaware of the indignities thrust upon her.
I wouldn't wish that knowledge on any living soul, and remain hopeful that the tools of science will succeed in outwitting this disease that Ronald Reagan's daughter describes as "a thief that sneaks into the brain and robs a family of everything that is dear, as it takes the loved one". - Yours, etc.,
Louise Geaney, Forster Place Galway.