Living with Alzheimer’s: How patients, families in UAE cope

Living with Alzheimer’s: How patients, families in UAE cope

Dubai: Vijayalakshmi Srinivasan, 81, wears her sweetest smile. She greets you with a friendly disposition and is very affable. She connects with strangers immediately and is quick to pick up on the mood of all those around her. Srinivasan has Alzheimer’s disease - the most common type of dementia. It is a progressive disease which initially begins with memory loss leading to loss of ability to carry on a conversation and respond to the environment. Shoba Dakshinamurthy 54, Srinivasan’s daughter is by her side. She is extremely patient and kind to her mother. She patiently listens to her mother’s constant interruptions when she is in conversation with other people. “My mother was a working woman and led a very independent life. My father had Parkinson’s disease and passed away in 2014. My mother took care of him. During COVID-19, she came to live with me and my family in Dubai. That is when I started noticing things about her. She would confuse people’s names. At first we thought it was common in old age. Then I started noticing she would forget where the bathroom and kitchen was in the house. An initial diagnosis confirmed she had Alzheimer’s. She later travelled