In their own voices: people with Alzheimer's disease

Chicago Tribune
Tonight, an extraordinary series of four documentary films about Alzheimer's disease debuts on HBO.

The first film, "The Memory Loss Tapes," showing this evening, took my breath away.

It's a look at seven men and women struggling with this devastating illness, which gradually robs people of their memories and independence. There is no narration; the people and their families speak for themselves.

The scenes caught on film are astonishingly intimate, often uncomfortably wrenching.

There is Joe Potocny, 63, once considered a computer genius, who is acutely aware of his mind deteriorating bit by bit. Think of watching a piece of meat being sliced at the grocery store; that's what it's like, he says.

In a heart-breaking scene, Potocny takes his granddaughter to the park and while she's swinging turns away, appearing to be lost, seemingly forgetful of the child. The camera lingers, making no effort to minimize the distressing lack of connection.

"When it gets to the point to where I feel that I'm stepping over the line, going to become totally a different person, then they will all be given a hug and a kiss and said goodbye to," he says, speaking of his family to a psychologist. The meaning is clear: suicide.

There is no judgment in this film, no attempt to layer context around the scenes that unfold. They speak for themselves.

We see Woody Geist, 78, lying on a bed with another resident, Cathy, in a home for people with Alzheimer's. She kisses him affectionately; they cuddle. Later, they are sitting happily together when Geist's wife and daughter come in to take him out for the evening. As Geist leaves, Cathy sits in the corner of the couch, alone.

How is it possible to blame Geist, who whistles as he walks around the home, clearly not knowing where he is? "Nothing there," we hear him say repeatedly as he wanders.

Earlier, we see Geist's wife looking at a photograph of her younger, handsome husband. "What a sweet man," she says, with regret. "Sometimes I can't look at [the picture] at all. I see how much I've lost."

Geist can barely put a sentence together but when he joins the members of his former singing group on a stage in a large room full of people -- this is the outing his wife has organized -- he can sing a solo, missing not a word. Not all is lost, clearly. But what remains is difficult to guess.

There are scenes of terror in this film. When Yolanda Santomartino, 75, screams at snakes crawling over her wheelchair -- they're only there in her imagination -- one has a sense of someone trapped in a horror house. "it's right on top of me," she wails, out of touch with reality. "It's coming after me."

Santomartino looks in the mirror in her room and thinks she.......read the whole story

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