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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
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Get over THIS!
Ronald Reagan also had Alzheimer's and was showing symptoms even while in office!:
http://www.doctorzebra.com/prez/z_x40alz_letter_g.htm
"At one time Reagan "possessed a remarkable memory that his brother described as photographic" [9]. Soon after graduating from college, he auditioned for a sports announcer job by "re-creating the fourth quarter of a Eureka College football game from memory" [9]. (Reagan had played in the game.) As an actor, "much of Reagan's early career was spent in the B-film division, where his knack for quick memorization made him a valuable asset. Producers of B-films, as Reagan often put it, 'didn't want them good, they wanted them Thursday'" [9].
By contrast, as President, in his 70s, "He forgot the names of Cabinet officers, trusted aides and visiting dignitaries. In Brazil, he toasted the people of Bolivia" [9]. A friend tells Dr. Zebra of a film clip in which Reagan, as President, is asked a question, only to look completely blank until his wife Nancy whispers an evasive answer in his ear (audible to the camera), which Reagan then speaks.
Recovering from being shot (three months into his presidency), Reagan became disoriented in the intensive care unit. His physicians, therefore, pressed to have him moved to a hospital suite [1j]. Comment: In retrospect, this was probably a sign of Reagan's slipping mentation... yes, Dr. Zebra is aware of the many reasons people get disoriented in an ICU, but let's face it, it does not often happen to 40 year olds. This is especially true given a physician's statement that during Reagan's recovery "He always had a high pain threshold and required only small amounts of pain medication" [6a].
In 1993 Reagan became increasingly forgetful. Alzheimer disease was diagnosed during his annual visit to the Mayo Clinic in 1994. His condition was announced to the public in a carefully worded letter to the American people on Nov. 5, 1994 [9]
There is an interesting photograph of Reagan, taken in 1996, that shows a visible sign of his Alzheimer disease [More] . He is shown standing with a model of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan, a ship named in his honor, along with his wife and the CEO of the company building the ship. Reagan's necktie peeks out below the button of his suit coat. Reagan was extremely careful with his appearance all his life -- as an actor and as a President who wore $1000 suits -- so this tiny slip is actually significant, as a sign of inattention caused by his disease. (For a case in which this sign was actually responsible for the diagnosis of Alzheimer disease in a business executive, see [3a].)
Was Reagan symptomatic while in office? There was speculation about his mental function as early as 1987, just after he underwent his third major operation while in office (prostate). In response, Reagan held a press conference on March 19, 1987 in which he performed extremely well in front of a hostile press [12a].
Reagan's mother was "senile" for "a few years" before she died of atherosclerotic disease at age 80 [2]."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ite-House.html
"Ronald Reagan's son claims his father had Alzheimer's while in the White House"
"Former President Ronald Reagan would have been 100 years old on February 6, and in celebration of the centennial, his youngest son Ron has released a new book about his father.
Titled Ron Reagan - My Father at 100, Ron suggests in the new tome that his father suffered from Alzheimer's disease while in the White House.
'Had the diagnosis been made in, say, 1987, would he have stepped down?', Ron asks in the book released next Tuesday. 'I believe he would have'.
In excerpts of the memoir released by U.S. News, Ron says he saw hints of confusion and 'an out-of-touch president' during the 1984 campaign and again in 1986 where he claimed his father could not remember the names of the familiar California canyons he was flying over.
Mr Reagan was formally diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in August 1994 at the age of 83.
But while some people suggested they knew Reagan had the disease while in office, his four White House doctors said they saw no evidence of it.
52-year-old Ron writes in the memoir that doctors have more of an understanding of the disease now than back when his father was diagnosed and appreciate that the signs of the disease can be in evidence before it is acutally recognised.
'The question, then, of whether my father suffered from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's while in office more or less answers itself', Ron writes.
Alzheimer's is an incurable neurological disorder which destroys brain cells. Mr Reagan informed the nation in a hand written letter when he was formally diagnosed.
40th President: Ronald Reagan was in office between 1981 and 1989 (pictured here giving his farewell address to the nation)
40th President: Ronald Reagan was in office between 1981 and 1989 (pictured here giving his farewell address to the nation)
'I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's Disease.
'I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done'.
Mr Reagan died at his home in Bel Air, California on June 5 2004 aged 93.
'Three years into his first term as president, though, I was feeling the first shivers of concern that something beyond mellowing was affecting my father', Ron writes in the book.
'He told me you make him feel stupid', my mother [Nancy Reagan] once shared, to my alarm. I didn't want my father to feel stupid."
