Part B

A Terrible Disease

The phone rang and it was my husband Jack asking me to take some lunch to his office. As I drove off, I noticed a new shopping center. Strange I hadn't noticed it before. Near his office I also saw a fire station I didn't recognize.

'When did they build that new shopping center?' I asked Jack. 'And I'm glad to see that new fire station. It'll give a good landmark.'

'Diana, they've been there for ages,' Jack scolded.

Bewildered, I became angry and, starting up the engine, began to pull away. Then I braked. Where was the exit? Suddenly, nothing was familiar. I realized I had no idea how to get home. I had to stop again and again to ask for directions. Eventually, I got home. A 30-minute drive had taken me four hours.

Two months later, at the office where I worked as a legal researcher, a smart young man approached me.

'Hi, Diana. Good to see you,' he said, smiling.

I hesitated, then smiled with resignation. 'Please forgive me, it's one of those days. I simply can't bring your name to mind.'

'Diana, I'm your cousin Richard,' he said very slowly.

After that, I was constantly making mistakes and kept forgetting my way around the building. In the end, I made the painful decision to resign from work. I also started pretending to be a tourist when I got lost because residents tend to give much better directions to visitors.

Desperate to discover what was wrong with me, I made an appointment with a neurologist. After various tests he told me I had Alzheimer's disease. I felt numb. I'd hoped to find I was worrying about nothing, but now my worst fears were confirmed. And I was only 53!

When I told Jack and my three grown-up children about my disease, their reaction was quiet but supportive. 'Stop worrying,' Jack said. 'We'll take good care of you.'

That night, I was looking through some papers belonging to my mother, who'd died of cancer years before, when I saw her maps. They were hand-drawn and covered every place my mother went, including my house. As I examined them, I remembered Mother's other eccentric habits. She wouldn't drive out of her neighborhood or at night. One day, she hadn't even recognized me. Could she have had Alzheimer's, too, without anyone realizing?

Now at 57, on good days I'm filled with hope and determination, but on bad days I have the worst sense of being alone. I've started a support group for other sufferers, for I know it's essential to have contact with people who are walking through the same maze.

Jack's coping well. While he still dreams of waking up to find all this has been a horrible nightmare, he's assured me that I can depend on him. When we married he didn't know 'for better or worse' included Alzheimer's. But neither did I.

Questions:

1. What does the story mainly tell us?

2. Which of the following is one of the symptoms of the speaker's disease?

3. What can we learn from the story?

4. What do you know about the speaker from the story?

5. What can be inferred about the speaker's mother?

Part C

Old Age's Problems and Opportunities

Old age in the United States presents many problems and opportunities. As a result of improved medical services , people live longer than they used to. This increase in longevity creates a wide range of social needs. The medical specialty of gerontology (老年醫學) has opened up new research areas and careers related to the elderly.

Because of changes in the family structure from extended to nuclear, the elderly have to create existences apart from basically small family units. This situation is complicated by the fact that many of their friends may have died and their children may have moved away.

The elderly must set up a new life. Often, the elderly must rely on a fixed income - Social Security and pensions - and gradually diminished savings. While some live with their children, many more live by themselves, with a friend or in a nursing home.

However, the increasing proportion of elderly people in society has given them a new political power. They have formed organizations to voice their own needs and concerns to local state and federal agencies. Lobbying(游說)for such issues as increased Social Security benefits, better health care, income tax benefits and rent controls has brought to the public an increased awareness of the determination of the elderly to assert their ability to deal effectively with their own lives.

Part D

A Walking Miracle

Old age is often accompanied by various kinds of illnesses. When he woke up on a July morning in 2001, Robert Tools, 59, could hardly lift his head off his pillow. He had suffered from heart troubles since a decade ago, which was made worse by his diabetes. The six-foot-three-inch former librarian and teacher became so weak that his weight had dropped from more than 200 pounds to 140. Tools was too sick for a heart transplant. So he agreed to let two surgeons try something that had never been done before. That afternoon Tools became the first person ever to be implanted with a self-contained artificial heart.

Eight days later, Tools left the hospital for the first time to take a stroll through a city park, with his artificial heart pumping blood through his body. The heart is powered by a battery implant that holds a 30-to-40 minute charge. The battery is recharged via a coil attached to an external battery pack good for two hours, which Tools wears on a belt. Or the coil recharger can be plugged directly into a wall outlet. A small controller, about the size of a palm, is also implanted in the chest to regulate blood flow. The tiny controller knows how to adjust to his body's need for higher or lower blood flow when he stands, sits, walks, or otherwise. But Tools' mobility is still limited. Most of the time, a mobility transmitter implanted in his chest broadcasts data to a computer in his hospital room so that doctors can continually monitor and fine-tune the blood flow.

Tools says living with an artificial heart means adjusting to some strange new sensations. "The biggest thing is getting used to not having a heart beat, except a whirring sound, and that makes me realize that I'm alive because I can hear it without a stethoscope."

Statements:

1. Robert Tools suffered from several health conditions before his operation.

2. Doctors decided to put an artificial heart in Tools' body because there was no suitable donor heart available.

3. Tools' artificial heart was implanted in his chest along with a couple of other devices.

4. Tools now must carry an external battery pack with him all the time.

5. Tools' blood flow can be remote-controlled by doctors in the hospital.

6. Tools' artificial heart is made of plastic materials.

7. His new heart allows Tools to move about more than two hours at a time.

8. Before Tools, a few artificial heart implant operations had been performed on other persons but all of them had failed.