Part 31 (2/2)

When Ally walked in, Nina was sitting in her favorite chair, dressed in her favorite black suit. Her makeup was perfect Thank you, Maria.

”Hey, sweetie, you look great.”

Nina stared at her as though trying to place the face and said nothing.

She just looked confused and very, very sad.

Dear G.o.d, Ally thought, this is the first time she's completely failed to recognize me.

It was so disheartening. Last night, when Ally had come up to discuss whether or not she still wanted to explore Dr. Van de Vliet's experimental treatment, Nina had been completely cognizant. Ally had tried to explain the concept of neural tissue regeneration using stem cells, which was difficult since she barely understood it herself.

”Mom,” she had said ”this might be something that could reverse some of the damage to your... memory. At least keep it from getting worse. I know it sounds scary but everybody says the conventional treatments for what you have don't work very well or very long.”

”Then let's go out there and talk to him, honey. Just come in the morning and take me. By then I'll probably forget everything you've said tonight.”

How prescient, Ally thought sadly. Now Nina was just gazing blankly ahead, silent. Does she remember anything from last night?

For that matter, what was Nina thinking now? Was she conscious of the fact she was losing her mind? And what

about the ultimate question: do we want to live longer merely to be alive, or do we want to stay alive in order to do things? To be or to do? In her mother's case, she knew it was the latter. Nina had always been full of life, ambition, and projects. Would she want to go on living if none of those things were possible? You never know for sure about other people, even your own mother, but Ally suspected she would rather not live to see that day.

Now, though, was she even aware it was coming?

Ally thought back about the first signs. Nina hadn't yet turned sixty- five when she abruptly started having trouble remembering little things. She began forgetting where she'd put items, and she gave up on remembering phone numbers and dates. Initially it had just seemed like a lot of ”senior moments” run together, very puzzling.

But then it got worse. She'd always loved music, and she'd always played the piano. She loved Chopin, especially the nocturnes. By the time she was sixty-six, however, she was having trouble remembering the names of her favorite composers. She also completely gave up trying to play, either from memory or with the music. When getting dressed one day, she put on her blouse completely backwards. It was bad.

Ally had taken her to see four different specialists and they all had concluded that Nina Hampton suffered from what was known as familial early-onset Alzheimer's. It was caused by a mutated gene and was extremely rare, representing only some 5 percent of all Alzheimer's cases.

There were two major drugs currently on the market, Exelon and Reminyl, that could relieve some of the symptoms of Alzheimer's by boosting the action of the brain chemical acetylcholine. However, Nina had not yet declined to the stage where doctors would prescribe those drugs. To resort to them was an admission you were at endgame, since they usually were effective only for a few months.

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