Still Alice Case Study Summary

Still Alice (2015) directed by ****** starts with Alice giving a lecture to her Harvard linguistics class while stumbling over words and concepts. She forgets plans with her husband and gets disoriented while in familiar places. She notices that she is not herself and consults with a neurologist where she is presented with a series of memory tests. Alice starts giving herself words to remember while completing housework. The doctor says she has sporadic memory impairment in relation to how young she is. He confirms that there is evidence of decline in her level of daily functioning. Alice told John, her husband about her visits to the neurologist and that she was being tested for early on set Alzheimer’s. She explained how she was having trouble

Data found by Rabinovici et. al. in 2010 supported that early amyloid beta accumulation increased vulnerability to amyloid beta pathology and plays critical roles in susceptibility to Alzheimer’s in young patients. The quantity of beta amyloid in her brain shows that the build up has been happening for the last few years. The doctors also inform her that there is a 50/50 chance of passing the gene on to the carriers' children and the odds of developing the disease, as a gene carrier is 100%. Alice and John inform their three grown children, Anna, Tom and Lydia of these findings and inform them that there are options if they want to get tested for it. Anna her oldest daughter who is pregnant with twins tested positive, Tom is negative and Lydia chose not to get tested. Alice offers to stop everything and go visit Anna to see if she’s okay but Anna wishes to be left alone. Alice is hurt that her daughter does not want any of her