My Mom-Mom was a wonderful woman. She would cook the best Smith Island meals, sing the prettiest songs, and make people laugh until they could not any longer. I only knew her up to when I was 10 years old, so my memories of her are very distant. She sadly had a disease that was 100 percent incurable, and 100 percent fatal: Alzheimer’s. She was known as a kind, loving, confident, hospitable woman by all who knew her. She had the disease for 9 years, and the last four and a half were the worst. The wonderful woman my family knew became afraid, nervous, anxious, and sometimes disoriented and lost. It was a devastating feeling to know my grandmother would no longer be the same. Because doctors and experts cannot yet find a cure to this disease, it is difficult financially, medications are of no help, and the patient, after years of living with Alzheimer’s, soon passes away, due to the brain no longer telling the body how to function. The proper name for this disease seems to be appropriate: ‘The long goodbye’ because the family members seem to grieve for the affected person with Alzheimer’s long before they even die. My mother became physically and mentally exhausted from taking care of my grandmother every day. It is the cruelest disease out there. I’m pretty sure anyone taking care of someone with Alzheimer’s did not expect anyone that they love to get this life changing disease. To watch them go from one personality to the next can be hard. “Alzheimer’s attacks the part of the brain that controls memory, language, and thought”. (Alzheimer’s Foundation) The statistics of the number of people affected by the disease were astounding. According to an online article about the disease, there are approximately, “5.4 million Americans with Alzheimer’s disease now, and that number is expected to grow 16 million by the middle of the century as increasing numbers of people over 65 is most vulnerable to the disease. Which means, more than