CNN's World's Untold Stories: Dementia Village

I cried throughout this video realizing that there is another option for the care of our elderly dementia people, but for the lack of public finance and I think public caring for each other, this option (and others) are not available to our loved ones. 

Book Review--"Still Alice"

I have recently finished “Still Alice” written by Lisa Genova, a neuroscientist and write.  I really have very little negative to say about this book.  The book drew you into the subtle decline of Alice Howland, a 50-year-old woman. Alice is a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a world-renowned linguistics expert. She is married to an equally successful husband, and they have three grown children.

 I would recommend this book to anyone who is facing the diagnosis of early onset Alzheimer’s disease.  It leads the reader through the changes Alice experiences as Alice’s attempts of cover up her memory deficits, continues to interact in her career and in her role as a wife, mother and grandmother.  It chronicles the coping mechanisms of her colleagues, her students, her husband and her family as they try to understand and deal with the changes taking place in Alice.

Book review—“The Long Goodbye”

“The Long Goodbye” by Patti Davis describes losing her father, Ronald Regan, to Alzheimer’s disease.  As a reader I was able to identify with her feelings of helplessness against this devastating disease.  This particular passage was especially poignant:  Alzheimer’s snips away at the threads, a slow unraveling, a steady retreat; as a witness all you can is watch, cry and whisper a soft stream of goodbyes.

In The Long Goodbye, Patti Davis describes losing her father to Alzheimer’s disease, saying goodbye in stages, helpless against the onslaught of a disease that steals what is most precious—a person’s memory.  “Alzheimer’s,” she writes, “snips away at the threads, a slow unraveling, a steady retreat; as a witness all you can do is watch, cry, and whisper a soft stream of goodbyes.”

This one sentence describes a person’s initial reaction to a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease.  There are great emotional descriptions of emotional reactions to the initial realization that Alzheimer’s disease has been diagnosed.  Beyond that this reader found the book one of personal memoirs of a daughter and her family. I was not able to relate to much of what the author wrote.  

All in all, it should be said that each and every Alzheimer patient is unique.  Their families cope based on a unique set of learned principles and their own personalities.  That being said, it is another perspective of how Alzheimer’s affects a daughter.

Alzheimers Work Place Alliance

NurseValue Has joined Alzheimer's Work Place Alliance.  Looking forward to sharing information with our friends to promote compassionate care for those individuals suffering from this devastating illness.See more at http://www.alz.org/awa/awa.asp

Understand Alzheimer's Disease in 3 Minutes