COPING WITH COGNITIVE IMPAIRMENT

Abstract

What we are talking about today is mental impairment caused by chronic irreversible brain damage, whether that damage is caused by multiple strokes or a deterioration of the brain cells of the Alzheimer's type. What terrible conditions they are-terrible because or what they do to the affected individual. It could happen to me. A sudden hemorrhage or blockage in circulation in my brain could slash and rend parts of that marvelously complex computer, my brain. Or Alzheimer's disease could eat away slowly, destroying brain cells bit by bit. Whether it is by tearing or slow erosion, the effect is to loosen my grasp on my world-humbling and confounding me, as it narrows the portals of my brain; scrambling and distorting my communication with the things and the people around me; depriving me of my ability to recall what has transpired a short time ago, but leaving intact my emotions, my feelings, and affecting my other senses in ways that we do not always know. My ability to taste, to hear, to feel by touching, seem to be intact but in the rare instance even my eyesight may be affected. There is a fluctuation and a variability in my performance which neither you nor 1 can explain. You onlyknow me from the outside, through my abnormal behaviour. Will you see me inside, struggling to maintain my assaulted personhood? Will you mistake my struggle to retain some dignity, some feeling of self, for organic disease rather than its consequences? For me, this is a life and death struggle from which I can collapse into crushing defeat and withdrawal, or I can be aroused to a fever pitch of agitation and frustration expressed in pacing, in tearing at my clothing, repetitive movements or sounds. You may think 1 am completely out of it, but if