“Regarding Dean” broke my heart into a million pieces :( It was an excellent portrayal of dementia, the slow slipping away of your own identity.
I know the fanfiction community will go wild with this episode. There will be MANY little!Dean fics, as well as many, many fics with Cas (or Sam) caring for Dean as he degrades. And I may even jump on the bandwagon :)
But really, the show was dear to me. I am very intelligent (arrogant? yes. but also true). To lose my intelligence in that manner would be frightening, deeply frightening. At first it might be cool, a bit of a break from my mind, but the inability to come back from that break is....just.....I don’t know.
I know someone with breast cancer. In a support group, the question was asked: what has been the worst for you? Many people answered with losing hair, losing a breast, that kind of thing. My friend said she missed her intelligence, and she was ridiculed for saying that. But........to KNOW that you were once smart, and now are not.....I don’t know how to express how troubling that is.