Alzheimer’s is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that usually starts slowly and worsens over time. It is the cause of 60% to 70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events (short-term memory loss).
Elaine Rusk is a full-time caregiver to her father, Norm.
Norm cannot stand or walk and they have no egress by which to take him out of the house by wheelchair. The two have been in the house for over 16 months.
Elaine belongs to several online support groups for dementia caregivers. A woman in one of her groups asked if he Dad knew he had Alzheimer’s, so Elaine decided to asked her father.
She filmed his response and it’s warmed the hearts people around the world.
Note: Many people feel the need to correct Elaine’s mispronunciation of Alzheimer’s. Elaine stated in the YouTube description, “I did mispronounce Alzheimer’s. At this point in time, when this video was filmed, I had gone 5 days with little to no sleep due to the needs of caring for my father and I was exhausted. Fortunately the majority of people who have seen this video are able to comprehend the true and important message that the video conveys even though I did mispronounce the German pronunciation.”