[Dan in Pasadena]

My father-in-law , who was a survivor of a WWII POW camp in Austria, an accomplished and profitable self taught painter, and who rose from being a mechanical draftsman to the vice presidency of a major Engineering and Construction firm developed Alzheimer's.

At one point I was sitting in the living room with him and he was verbalizing all these seemingly random things that made no sense. He had a bunch of physical twitches and things...then right in the middle of this his body suddenly relaxed, the twitches disappeared and he said, "...of course I'm not the man I used to be but....". He became silent for about 10-15 seconds...and then he began to twitch again and restarted with the random verbalizations.

Since then I have felt, perhaps wrongly, that he was "still in there" if you know what I mean? His real self was not gone, but was sort of overlayed with the disease. It makes me wonder if on some level they don't know EXACTLY what is happening to them. How horrible to be trapped within your own body.

I wish for God's mercy and for peace to all those who suffer this horrible disease and to those who care for them, Dan