In its normal progression, Alzheimer’s first demolishes short-term memories, then moves on to all or most memories, leading to confusion, shortness of temper, loss of inhibition, and eventually loss of all bodily functions, including how to breathe and swallow. As one observer has put it, in the end “one forgets, on a muscular level, how to exhale.” People with Alzheimer’s, it could be said, die twice—first in the mind, then in the body.
