Looking at a clear blue sky, he takes a deep breath. Inhaling and exhaling fresh air makes him calm down and focus. Although this looks like a liberty to some, it is actually a burdening daily task for him, besides taking his medicines on time and making sure to choose the right pill, which he can not understand the significance of to his health.
This is the life of Ali AlMehairi a 61-year-old father and grandfather that has contracted Alzheimer disease in his early 50s. Many in the Gulf region do not know what this is, and mistake it for the signs of old age. It is in fact a very serious illness that is incurable.
One out of every thirty Emiratis is most likely to have Alzheimer disease according to a study in 2012 that has shown that in the national population of 851,164 about 37,461 have shown signs of the disease.
The Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative disease of the brain with progressive loss of the brain’s nerve cells over time. This results in dementia, a decline in thinking processes, as well as a decline in the people’s ability to function and care for themselves.
Ali on several occasions has forgotten where he lives, and starts wandering off into the old family home in Sharjah that he left about thirty years. Luckily the current occupants are patience and kind to care for him until one of the family members could fetch him.
Although Alzheimer is incurable, there are some types of medicines that may be prescribed for a patient if identified early. The early signs Ali’s families noticed were his inability to
remember simple everyday tasks for example he would sometimes misplace his mobile phone and forget it in unusual places unknowingly. Being a family that is living with an Alzheimer’s patient and watching them slowly drift away, forget memories, thoughts and personal details like names is very hard.
Ali’s wife Kaltham Al Suwaidi holding his hand says, “I try to provide help as much as I can. Sometimes it gets very hard and I cry myself to sleep especially when I can tell he is forgetting important things about our 42-year-marriage, like our anniversary, or the birth dates of our children.”
“I am willing to slave for him, not because I love him, but because it is what he deserves for being a wonderful husband, and friend, but I cannot do it on my own. I constantly need the help of our children.”
Ali, usually a very independent person, was stripped of his rights to drive and go on in his life on his own. He now demands constant attention and has a full-time life nurse that oversees all of his activities, drives him around and provides help for him at any time he needs it because the doctor indicated that he now unable to drive on his own.
Floating in a sea of his own thoughts, sometimes he sits in the living room watching television, he starts to slaver, and someone has to get a tissue and wipe his face. He still does not notice that being done, and that is a sign that the medicine has stopped working and we would need a more effective one.
Hamad AlMehairi, Ali’s son says, “ I have employed the nurse for many reasons, but that does not mean I do not provide help whenever I can, It is just reassuring to know he always has someone by his side other than his children to take care of him”.
Despite having a full time driver, Ali sometimes gets into a very rebellious state in which he demands to drive. His family lets him do so in order to feel independent again.
I am lucky enough to have him as a father, although he sometimes forgets my name and calls me by my brother’s names. I still have the liberty of always remembering how good he was to me when I was a child, and individually identifying my personal traits and qualities in contrast to my other two brothers. He was always giving me individual attention, and now he deserves mine as much as possible and I vowed to offer him my help as much as I can.