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A college student’sTikTokvideo about the sweet tattoo she got for her father, who has Alzheimer’s, is going viral.
The TikTok user, who gives her name asIsabel, captions the viral video “showing my dad the tattoo i got for him after his alzheimer’s diagnosis.” The video, tagged #endalz, has gotten nearly 3 million likes in a week.
The video opens with Isabel standing in front of her father with her arms crossed to cover the tattoo on her right bicep.
“So I got a tattoo, and it’s actually for you,” she says. “I designed it a couple months ago when I was at school, and I really wanted to get it.”
“I hope that mom can get a matching version,” she adds, revealing the tattoo, a minimalist design of two nesting waves with her father’s birth year, ‘52.
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“It’s two waves,” Isabel says, explaining, “One’s me, and one’s you.”
“That’s so sweet,” her father says.
Isabel then prompts her father, “Do you know why the waves?"
“I like waves,” her father replies.
“It’s because we went sailing and you taught me how to sail,” Isabel says as her father chuckles and squeezes her shoulder.
“Ever since I was little, it’s my favorite memory with you.”
She says that her tattoo will “never fade and you’ll always remember it, and every day you see me, it will always remind you of us, and when you were born and the memories you helped me make.”
Her dad pulls her in for a hug, tearfully saying, “I love you so much."
Memory loss is a defining symptom of Alzheimer’s disease, which more than 6 million people are living with, according to theAlzheimer’s Association.
It’s the most common form of dementia, and it gets progressively worse over time.
Alzheimer’s is usually diagnosed in the “mild dementia” stage, according to theMayo Clinic, when “a person is having significant trouble with memory and thinking.”
It eventually progresses to severe dementia, when the person will lose the ability to communicate — only saying occasional words or phrases — and require “total assistance with eating, dressing, using the bathroom and all other daily self-care tasks.”
The timeline of the disease’s progression varies widely, with the average Alzheimer’s disease patient living from three to 11 years with the disease.
The TikTok — which had nearly 3 million likes in less than a week — inspired many commenters to share their own experiences with the disease.
“It’s so hard for me to reply to all of these but thank you so much for the support love and the personal stories you all have shared,” Isabel wrote.
source: people.com
