Sir Terry Pratchett: "Shut up and let me finish my story!" (about dealing with alzheimers)

[icymist]

This is one of my favorite authors in the whole wide world! He has kept me sane throughout my journeys in this world in the eighties and nineties!

National treasure Sir Terry Pratchett on how he is fighting the dying of the light

It’s while he’s telling a story about why he’s not frightened of death that Sir Terry Pratchett, possibly even more famous today for his Alzheimer’s than the millions of books he has sold, appears to come mentally undone.

“How can you fear death when you don’t even know what it is?” he’s wondering, dressed all in wizardly black, seated on a plush red bench in the airy atrium of the May Fair Hotel, London. “You don’t even know
if there’s going to be a ‘you’ there, to see you there. I remember when I was around six I was taken to... not Wookey Hole... um... the Mendip... where are the caves… the name... Somerset... this is PCA for you...”

PCA (posterior cortical atrophy) is the rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s Pratchett was diagnosed with in 2007, aged 59.

http://www.bigissue.com/features/1567/sir-terry-pratchett-shut-and-let-me-finish-my-story

[niyad]

1. k and r--thank you for sharing this. pratchett and his "discworld" series have brightened many a

day for me. I tell people who are finding him for the first time "if you read his books in public, be aware that people are going to look at you very funny--because you will be laughing so much"

for those of you not familiar with the discworld series, RUN, do not walk, to your nearest library or bookstore and start reading.

[Kookaburra]

2. I've read them all and love them

He is a treasure. I'm so sorry to hear he has alzheimer's - and at such a young age.