She Was Demented for Ten Years and Finished Her Master’s Program Studies, Now She’s Lecturing All Over the World

This showed, how if you put your mind to it, you can still, OVERCOME the obstacles in your own life, a story of inspiration, from the Front Page Sections, translated…

The fifty-nine year-old International Alzheimer’s Association’s chairwoman, Kate Swaffer was diagnosed with early onset dementia for ten years, she’d used her own experience, and told, that the wishes of the people diagnosed with dementia is to continue living life the way they had done before, with the right to drive, to work, and she’d hoped, that in the future, the world can treat dementia like hypertension, diabetes, and to NOT have the rights to live independently stripped away from the patients.

here she is, in her graduation cap and gown, photo from online…

In 2005, Kate was diagnosed with Arnold-Chiari malformation, she underwent surgery as her physician advised, and one day after her surgery, she’d anted to read a series of numbers from a phone number, but she could only recite the first few digits, and, her sight, along with all the words and numbers were, out of control, they’d started, dancing around off the pages.

The doctor told her, that this was early onset Alzheimer’s, she was raising two children and studying for her master’s degree back when she was diagnosed, she thought that she was about to make an exit in life.  The doctor told her, “You should prepare for your final rites.”, and, as she’d gone into treatment, her physician never looked her in the eyes, always talked to her husband, as if, she wasn’t there anymore.

Unwilling to let Alzheimer’s run her life, and there wasn’t any facilities set up back then, or government programs, that advocated that the patients can coexist well with dementia, she’d decided to continue her original lifestyle, to finish her studies.  Although she had come into contact with a ton of troubles and hardships, thankful for technology, she’d used the language systems to pass the words to her friends, helped her resolve the spelling difficulties, and, as she read, she’d colored the lines with the same colors, to prevent herself from skipping the lines as she read.

speaking at a forum, photo fromonline…

Swaffer said, she’s not afraid of dying, but worried that she may forget her husband, her loved ones, as well as herself too.

So, despite how she was diagnosed as early onset she’d still worked hard, to achieve her dreams, and she’s now, bringing about more awareness to the early onset form of dementia to the rest of the world too.