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| Author Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago LONDON - Best-selling fantasy author Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's, he said in a message posted to his illustrator's Web site. In a brief note to fans entitled "An Embuggerance," Pratchett, 59, said he was taking the news "fairly philosophically" and "possibly with a mild optimism." "I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news," he wrote on the Web site of Paul Kidby, who has illustrated many of his books. Pratchett is best known for his Discworld series, which explores the residents of very flat, very weird and almost invariably hilarious planet dominated by the sprawling, chaotic city of Ankh-Morpork. Pratchett wrote his first Discworld novel, "The Color of Magic," in 1983, and 35 more books followed, many of which topped the best seller charts. Pratchett's Web site said his novels have sold more than 45 million copies and have been translated into 33 languages worldwide. His latest work, "Making Money," was published in September and Harper Children's was due publish a non-Discworld novel, "Nation," in 2008. Pratchett said he would continue completing "Nation" and that he had already begun working on "Unseen Academicals" — another writing project. "Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there's time for at least a few more books yet " he wrote in his message. "I know it's a very human thing to say 'Is there anything I can do,' but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry." |
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| From The TimesMarch 13, 2008 Terry Pratchett’s million-dollar wish to give battle against Alzheimer’s an extra kick Terry Pratchett was found to have the disease three months ago Ben Hoyle, Arts Reporter Terry Pratchett, the bestselling fantasy author, has donated a million dollars to help to find a cure for Alzheimer’s. He was found to have the disease three months ago and in a speech to be delivered at a charity conference in Bristol today, he is to announce his desire to “kick a politician in the teeth” over the patchy provision for sufferers and lack of investment in research. He also talks movingly of how Alzheimer’s “strips away your living self a bit at a time”, depicting it as “a nasty disease, surrounded by shadows and small, largely unseen tragedies”. He said: “People don’t know what to say unless they’ve had it in the family.” Alzheimer’s is an incurable brain disease that affects 400,000 people in the UK. Pratchett, 59, is one of the country’s most popular authors, best known for his satirical Discworld novels. When he revealed that he was suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s last year, he dealt with it in characteristically breezy style, calling it “an embuggerance”, emphasising that “I am not dead”. He received 60,000 messages of support within the first few hours of the news posted on his website. Privately he reacted with “a sense of loss and abandonment”. The longer he has lived with it, the more angry he has become about the lack of support for patients, with £11 spent for each person on research every year, compared with £289 for each cancer patient. “There’s nearly as many of us as there are cancer sufferers, and it looks as if the number of people with the disease will double within a generation . . . It’s a shock and a shame, then, to find out that money for research is 3 per cent of that which goes to find cancer cures. “I’d like a chance to die like my father did — of cancer, at 86. He talked to us right up to the last few days, knowing who we were and who he was. Right now, I envy him. And there are thousands like me, except that they don’t get heard.” In contrast to the “war” against cancer, the shortage of specialists leaves “those of us with early onset in particular, [fighting] a series of skirmishes. “My GP is helpful and patient, but I don’t have a specialist locally. The NHS kindly allows me to buy my own Aricept [the Alzheimer's drug] because I’m too young to have Alzheimer’s for free, a situation I’m OK with in a want-to-kick-a-politician-in-the-teeth-kind-of-way.” He takes “more supplements than the Sunday papers”, and compares remedies with a network of online advisers that includes university researchers and a witch. “It’s a good idea to cover all the angles.” Pratchett will tell the Alzheimer’s Research Trust conference: “Part of me lives in a world of New Age remedies and science, and some of the science is a little like voodoo. But science was never an exact science, and personally I’d eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance.” Pratchett recently published the 36th Discworld novel and has a message of reassurance for his fans: “I want to go on writing! Admittedly, that means I have to stay alive. You can’t write books when you are dead, unless your name is L. Ron Hubbard [the founder of Scientology].” A writer wronged “ It’s a shock and a shame to find out that money for [Alzheimer’s] research is 3 per cent of that which goes to find cancer cures. Perhaps that is why, for example, I know three people who have successfully survived brain tumours but no one who has beaten Alzheimer’s.” “ I’d like a chance to die like my father did – of cancer, at 86 . . . Before he went to spend his last two weeks in a hospice he was bustling around the house, fixing things. He talked to us right up to the last few days, knowing who we were and who he was.” “ The NHS kindly allows me to buy my own Aricept [an Alzheimer’s drug] because I’m too young to have Alzheimer’s for free, a situation I’m OK with in a ‘want to kick a politician in the teeth’ kind of way.” “ Personally, I’d eat the arse out of a dead mole if it offered a fighting chance.” “ I want to go on writing. You can’t write books when you are dead, unless your name is L. Ron Hubbard.” |
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| From The TimesMarch 14, 2008 Terry Pratchett: The Alzheimer's warrior Penny Wark Terry Pratchett is accustomed to having a dedicated following and has never been shy about engaging with his fans. Between book signings and Chinese meals with them he would take off the wizardly black clothes that make him recognisable and disappear to his home in Wiltshire, his writing and his overseeing of the industry his books have spawned. Now he has credibility within a new constituency, which admires him greatly for talking about Alzheimer's. Pratchett learnt he had the disease three months ago and has now donated a million dollars (£500,000) to fund research. He talks movingly and openly about the process that has started to fold down his life. It's an embuggerance, he wrote when he disclosed it, though he believes that, with care and persistence, he can live fully for many years yet. Every day he has to relearn how to type, but it doesn't stop him: he has just delivered a book and is about to start another. Pratchett, a direct man, would brush away any suggestion of heroism. The son of a garage mechanic and a secretary from Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, he discovered The Wind in the Willows at 10, read his way through his local library and started to write fantasy stories himself. He ducked out of Alevels to become a journalist on the Bucks Free Press, defended the nuclear power industry as a press officer and was able to give up the day job at 29. By then Discworld, the flat planet that hurtles through space on the backs of four giant elephants, which in turn stand on the shell of a vast turtle, was established and his engaging imagination and comic talent had hooked a cult following. He recently published the 36th Discworld book and regularly heads bestselling lists. Such success does not impress the literary establishment. As one commentator put it, his work is too populist to be good, too good to be populist. Perhaps A. S. Byatt got it right when she equated him with P.G.Wodehouse and Lewis Carroll. Pratchett refuses invitations to the Groucho on principle, but his defensiveness can make him seem chippy. I am not the only journalist to have found him occasionally pedantic, and to have been irritated by his habit of anticipating your next question before you've decided what it is. He can come across as a clever clogs, though in the next breath he will be modest: “I wouldn't ever confess to having anything other than a big bag of tricks.” For him, the principal tragedy of his condition is that it threatens his writing. At 59 he has been married for almost 40 years to Lyn, who looks after the finances, which now run into many millions. Not that they spend too many of them: he does deals when they go on holiday and his main extravagance is books. They live with lots of cats and indulged chickens that die of old age on the nesting box. Which is just how he would like to go himself. |