what is the worst disease?

A lot of people, especially people halfway through their lives, would say it's Alzheimer's. For a very long time you are keenly aware of it. You know you learned something but it's now gone. You can't remember the names of movies and songs you liked, soon all you remember is that you liked them. Then that starts to happen with people. You can't remember the people you met most recently. You forget that some important people in your life have died. You can't figure out how to work contemporary technology, you wonder where your typewriter and your phonograph are. There's a dog sitting in your lap who adores you but you can't find your beloved pet who died twenty years ago. What do you mean my husband is dead? My child was killed in a war in Iraq? What the hell was he doing in Iraq? This is not my house.

Before it progresses to this point you lose your day-to-day continuity so you don't know what's wrong with you. The problem is that at the beginning you can see this moment coming and you dread it because it means you've lost all control over your life. You see how scared, angry, and sad people are in this condition and you don't want to be like them. You can spend years seeing this moment coming and not being able to avoid it.

For most people it's much less merciful than death.

My mother and I never got along, at least not since I was about 12 and maybe before that. We would have been completely estranged if my dear wife hadn't done her best to maintain some sense of family. When we had to put her in a home it was like good riddance. But my sweetie pie gently talked me into making more or less regular visits. Ho hum, so we came, can we leave now? But then the day came when she looked at my wife, furrowed up her brow, and then called her by my first wife's name. We had been divorced for thirty years. She didn't know this wonderful woman any more, the one who had done so much for her, more than I had ever done. A tear came to my eye. I don't ever want to be like that.

Eventually you regress so badly that you lose your sense of identity.

Isaac Asimov--crotchety old dude though he may have been even as a young man--was much beloved and was surrounded by a steady stream of friends and family as his death approached. Everyone was so solicitous, they kept asking him if there was anything they could get for him, anything he wanted. What else can you think of to say to someone like this? It's just as hard on us as it is on him. That's another reason Alzheimer's is so dreaded, nobody wants to put their loved ones through it. You feel so degraded, so embarrassed, so sorry... in advance, for years.

On Isaac Asimov's last day, when someone asked him if he wanted anything, he suddenly started saying, "I want... I want... I want Isaac Asimov." He repeated that a few times, each time with more alarm. No one knew what to say or do. Finally he got a look of relief and said, "I am Isaac Asimov." Then he died.

He was in the process of forgetting who he was. Goddess, don't let me go there.