How to control your voiceMy grandma was a college teacher before her retirement. She was intelligent, eloquent and graceful. Because of her wonderful communication skills, her colleagues respected her and her students loved chatting with her. Even after her retirement, they still visited her to discuss about all kinds of academic projects. For me, my grandma was an amazing storyteller. Before I went to college, she told me lots of vivid stories and answered my countless questions. My grandma is still alive, but why did I use “was” here? Because since two years ago, she has been turning into a totally different person. Now, she cannot talk, cannot laugh, and even cannot recognize who I am. She lost one of her most important abilities for her whole life: the ability to communicate. Seeing my grandma sitting in darkness, refusing to talk to me and refusing to give back any response to my touching, hugging and even yelling, I feel great pain. I can’t help asking myself: Is this still my grandma? That smart, eloquent grandma?My grandma is one of the Alzheimer’s disease patients. These AD patients are losing their abilities to speak, to listen and to memorize. They are turning off the switch of communicating. They are suffering from mania, paranoia, and some other severe physical diseases. The worse situation is, since AD is incurable, the family members of these patients start ignoring them. Their perceptions are changed because of the patients’ fumbled sentences and strange behaviors, just like how I doubted about my grandma.