On diagnosing Alzheimer dementia
================================

* Shane Neilson

I’m telling you what you cannot understand.  
</br> I wonder if we are lost, or merely waylaid;  
</br> *where* the ultimate question, and your smile  
</br> belie years receding into perfection.  
</br>  

I said the diagnosis as if there were sense to be made,  
</br> meanwhile there was your husband who said  
</br> *I’m dying inside*. Self-diagnosis always makes my job easier.  
</br> I look at you, who can still command appearances,  
</br> who have not yet receded from the human.  
</br>  

Did you know that, at the end, you may lose your smile?  
</br> You will only have a few months to live then.  
</br> Poets know this. Doctors sign the death certificate.  
</br> When it is not up to us, you and me, I’m afraid.  
</br> Your husband looks at me with forethought.  
</br> You are smiling and social, a perfect acquaintance at a party.  
</br> And that there are drugs seems an afterthought. Much is after,  
</br> D-day, and the before is taking care of itself in an Elysian field,  
</br> or developing in a darkroom, or nowhere.  
</br>  

Do not remember me, or what I say: Look at your husband  
</br> in the dementia of meaning. There are still allotments.  
</br> Take heed of what is left, build a life raft for goodbye,  
</br> and when we cease to love, there is time to forget.  
</br>  

![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/181/8/E172/F1.medium.gif)

[Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/181/8/E172/F1)

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