Still Alice Book Review for Pre-PA and PA Students

Still Alice by Lisa Genova follows a psychology professor at Harvard who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. The story walks through her journey from before her diagnosis, through the diagnosis itself, and into the progression of the disease, along with how her family reacts. As an intelligent, accomplished woman, Alice has a very hard time coming to terms with what is happening to her.

I finished it expecting to be wrecked, and honestly it did not turn out to be quite as sad as I had braced for. What stood out most was how accurately it captures the way Alzheimer's affects both the patient and the people around them. Alice starts out living her normal life with the occasional memory lapse, but it is not until she gets lost on a running route she does every day that she realizes something is really wrong. The disease starts with small things and slowly builds into something debilitating.

This book gave me so much more empathy for why Alzheimer's patients experience some of the symptoms they do. Distrust was a big one, and I loved the way the story showed how that can develop. The brain is so powerful that it is almost scary to see how the disease reshapes it.

One moment really stuck with me. When the diagnosis first comes up, Alice's husband says she may have jumped too fast to a neurologist who is trained to see Alzheimer's, so of course that is what he sees. That captures how a lot of patients feel when they walk into a doctor's office, which is why our job is to build trust and treat people as individuals, not just a disease. As a PA student, Still Alice also gives a great view of the doctor-patient relationship and shows multiple Mini Mental Status Exams (MMSE), the simple tests used to gauge cognitive function. You can see the decline clearly across the book, and it even touches on current Alzheimer's treatments.

I definitely recommend this book for anyone in the medical field, anyone interested in medicine, or anyone who wants a better understanding of what Alzheimer's really involves. Alice describes the disease as a different kind of beast, where the available medications can feel like aiming a couple of leaky squirt guns at a blazing fire, which is a heartbreaking but honest picture of where treatment stood.

The book left me hopeful that ongoing research will lead to better medications and maybe a cure, hopefully sooner rather than later. There is also a movie version if you want to follow up after reading. For pre-PA students building a reading list, this is an easy, meaningful pick that doubles as great interview conversation material.

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Still Alice is a quick, meaningful read that will sharpen your empathy and give you something real to talk about in interviews. Add it to your pre-PA reading list, and if you want help weaving experiences like these into your application story, reach out anytime.