From: hound23x@gmail.com   
      
   Still Alice is 'shockingly accurate' - people living with dementia give their   
   verdict   
   Julianne Moore is an Oscar favourite for her portrayal of a woman with   
   dementia in Still Alice. But what do people with the condition think of the   
   film?   
      
    Still Alice julianne moore alzheimers   
    Julianne Moore in Still Alice: 'captures how the disease crept up'.   
   Photograph: Allstar/Artificial Eye   
   Tom Seymour   
   Tuesday 10 February 2015 13.33 EST   
      
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   Keith Oliver waited for his wife Rosemary to go out and then, with his nerves   
   rising, he laid out chocolates and wine in the living room and waited. Soon,   
   his new friends started to arrive - two clinical psychologists and three   
   psychology students from    
   the local memory clinic - and together they watched Still Alice, Julianne   
   Moore's depiction of a highly successful, family-orientated woman who is   
   diagnosed with early-onset dementia and loses almost everything.   
      
   Keith was head teacher of a primary school in Canterbury, Kent, when a doctor   
   gave him the same news on New Year's Eve in 2010. He was 54. "But I'm a   
   positive person and I didn't feel any fear," he says. After the diagnosis, he   
   walked with Rosemary along    
   Margate beach, where he told her: "One door closes and another will open."   
   Now, he says, his biggest fear is being left on his own.   
      
   It captured how dementia crept up on me ... how insidious the disease is, how   
   it can subtly eat away at you   
   Keith Oliver   
   Rosemary could not bring herself to watch the film, but he felt he had to.   
   "The film confronted each stage I've gone through, like a checklist," Keith   
   says. "It captured how dementia crept up on me, how it knocked my self-esteem   
   and brought doubts into    
   my mind before I even knew what I was dealing with. It captured how insidious   
   the disease is, how it can subtly eat away at you. It captured how I tried to   
   fight it, how I found coping strategies, how I tried to hide it. But her   
   decline happens so    
   quickly - I found that very difficult to come to terms with."   
      
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   Still Alice is directed by Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer, who has the   
   neurodegenerative condition Lou Gehrig's disease. The film, an adaption of   
   Lisa Genova's acclaimed 2007 novel, was shot fast last March, the only time   
   Moore was free from her    
   commitments on the Hunger Games films. Moore, whose performance has won her a   
   Golden Globe, a Bafta and an Oscar nomination, prepared for the part by   
   speaking with activists from the Alzheimer's Association, women given   
   early-onset diagnoses, and doctors    
   who treat the disease.   
      
   Still Alice, says the actor at the London premiere of the film, is motivated   
   by misconceptions about Alzheimer's, which causes up to 70% of dementia cases.   
   "I don't think there's enough information," she says. "I think an idea still   
   stands that Alzheimer'   
   s is all about memory. One of the things I found is that people often simply   
   feel lost. Alzheimer's is more akin to an ongoing panic attack where suddenly   
   nothing has any reference. It's like having to cut through fog every day."   
      
   What can be done? "There's very little awareness," says Moore. "But 30 years   
   ago, there was little awareness of cancer. With cancer, we've spent the money   
   needed to properly research it and we've talked about it openly. That's really   
   changed things. I    
   can only hope that happens with Alzheimer's."   
      
   Still Alice - review: an effortlessly excellent film about a difficult subject   
   4 / 5 stars   
    Read more   
   Hovering just behind Moore, with a grin on her face, is Wendy Mitchell, who   
   has made the trip from York to see the premiere. Wendy was diagnosed with   
   Alzheimer's last July. She was 58, a teetotaller who ran every other day and   
   worked as an NHS manager. "   
   I came out of my office one morning, which had been the same old office for a   
   couple of years, and just stood there not knowing where I was," she says. "I   
   would hear voices in the corridors and not have a clue who they belonged to."   
   Like the fictional    
   Alice, she's now deeply reliant on her mobile phone to keep her connected and   
   organised. "It's proved a life-saver," she says.   
      
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   Wendy, who Moore thanked in her Bafta speech, still works full-time and is   
   supported by her two daughters: Gemma, 31, and Sarah, 34. "The guilt I feel   
   for my daughters will never go away," she says and worries about "the day I   
   look at the two most    
   precious people in my life and don't know their names". She's been surprised   
   at how many difficult conversations she's had with people she thought she   
   could rely on. "I felt dismayed at many people's perception of the illness,"   
   she says. "For a lot of    
   people, it's a very embarrassing conversation. They seemed willing to simply   
   write me off, or appeared to have a stereotypical image of someone at the end   
   of the disease rather than the beginning."   
      
   I was left with a feeling of helplessness deep down in the pit of my stomach.   
   I felt I was being shown my own future   
   Wendy Mitchell   
   What did she think of the film? "I was left with a feeling of helplessness and   
   a sense of inevitability that reached deep down into the pit of my stomach. It   
   was a shockingly accurate reflection of my own experience. It felt like I was   
   being shown my own    
   future."   
      
   Hilary Doxford, from Yeovil, was 52 when she was told she had dementia. She   
   said the signs had existed a full seven years before she was diagnosed, but   
   her doctors kept giving her an all-clear. After the last all-clear, she   
   married her husband, Peter.    
   When she was eventually told she had dementia, she felt relieved to finally   
   have an explanation. "Then I panicked about how much time I had left," she   
   says, "and I wondered what to do next." So she started researching the   
   disease, which left her feeling "   
   sad and guilty about what impact it would have on Peter".   
      
   For Hilary, the film was like looking into a mirror. When she first told Peter   
   she had dementia, he said: "Whatever happens, I'm going to be here for you."   
   As the disease worsened and her memories started to go, she told her husband   
   she'd rather have    
   cancer, just as Alice does. "But we're still capable of making each other very   
   happy," she says. "I'd do anything for him and he'd do anything for me."   
      
   I am losing my memory and my abilities. One day I will lose being me   
   Hilary Doxford   
      
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