The Teen Scene - Alzheimers Disease

Many of the hot topics on the minds of today’s teens are video games, cars, shopping, grades, or music among many other things. However the one thing that teens don’t stop to take time for is finding a cure for something that thousands of people die with every year, Alzheimers.
Alzheimer’s is a terminal disease that basically causes a person to lose their memory and forget how to do things such as walk, talk, and feed themselves. The Alzheimer’s Report Summery says that currently there are 3.5 million people that are living with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Some people who work with Alzheimer’s patients describe it as how you learn to do things as a child in a certain order you lose those abilities in the reverse order. For instance, as a baby you first learn to scoot, and then crawl, until finally, you learn how to walk. A person with Alzheimer’s would first to forget how to walk and it will digress from there.
What teenagers need to realize is that even though this disease generally doesn’t affect people who are younger than 50 if we want to find a cure for this horrible disease we have to take action now not later.
The Alzheimer’s Association is an organization that is dedicated to funding research to find a cure for Alzheimer’s. Right now there are several medications out that can slow down the rate at which the patient is affected but unfortunately there is no cure yet but if we work hard, by the time that teens today are old enough to be affected by Alzheimer’s there could be. And there are several different ways to get involved and make this happen.
The first way is to participate in the Alzheimer’s Memory Walk put on by the Alzheimer’s Association every year in October. The Memory Walk is a 3 mile walk in either, Austin, San Marcus, Killeen, or Temple, that you can walk, jog, or take your dog. Prior to the walk each of the teams or individuals (depending on how you register) raise money to donate to the Association to find a cure and put an end to Alzheimer’s. The walk is not a race. People who are in wheel chairs, on crutches, or in strollers go out and show their support to find a cure.
The other way is to just raise the money with out going to one of the walks. This can be done by contacting the Azheimer’s Association-Austin Chapter and organizing your fundraiser. You can also make a private donation to this worthy cause. Every 70 seconds someone else develops Alzheimer’s according to the Alzheimier’s Associaton’s website.
Through our the years my mom, Melanie Wright, and I have been involved since I was 3 years old (I’m 15 now). I have been co-team captain for 5 of those years and captain for the last 3 years. This cause has always been so close to us as we have had numerous family members who have died with Alzheimer’s. As the numbers of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s rises, teens need to realize that whether we want to deal with it or not Alzheimer’s is something that will affect our generation and it won’t just go away unless we get involved. For more information on Alzheimer’s or to find out how to get involves you can visit the Alzheimer’s Association website at www.alz.org.