Category Archives: News & Politics

The New Yorker Magazine Talks About Dementia

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This week’s New Yorker magazine features a fantastic article by Rebecca Mead called, The Sense of an Ending. I encourage you to read this article, which talks about innovative ways to care for people living with dementia. The star of this story is Tena Alonzo, the director of education and research at the Beatitudes Campus in Phoenix. If you remember, Tena shared her insights about placing a parent with behaviors in an assisted living facility or nursing home with this blog.

Also, please check out Phillip Toledano’s photographs of dementia.

Last summer, Frederick C. Hayes was admitted to the advanced-dementia unit at Jewish Home Lifecare, on West 106th Street. It was not an easy arrival. Hayes, a veteran of the Korean War, had been a trial lawyer for five decades. He was tall, and, though he was in his early eighties, he remained physically imposing, and he had a forceful disposition that had served him well in the courtroom. One of his closest friends liked to say that if things were peaceful Hayes would start a war, but in war he’d be the best friend you could have.

Hayes practiced law until 2010, when he went to the hospital for a knee operation. While there, he was given a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease. His combative tendencies had become markedly pronounced, and before arriving at Jewish Home he was shuttled among several institutions. Nobody could manage his behavior, even after Haldol, a powerful antipsychotic drug, was prescribed. In the advanced-dementia unit, he appeared to be in considerable discomfort, but when doctors there asked him to characterize his pain, on a scale of one to ten, he insisted that he was not in pain at all. Still, something was clearly wrong: he lashed out at the nurses’ aides, pushing them away and even kicking them. It took three aides to get him changed.

One day in September, a woman named Tena Alonzo stopped by Hayes’s room. Alonzo, the director of education and research at the Beatitudes Campus, a retirement community in Phoenix, Arizona, found Hayes lying in a hospital bed that had been lowered to within a foot of the floor, to lessen the risk that he would hurt himself by falling out of it. His face was contorted into a grimace, she later recalled, and he writhed and moaned. Alonzo, who is fifty-two, has spent the past twenty-eight years working with dementia patients—or, in her preferred locution, with people who have trouble thinking. She crouched next to the bed, and spoke in a quiet, intimate tone. “I’m here to help you—do you hurt anywhere?” she asked, moving her hand gently over his chest, his abdomen, his arms and legs. With each touch, she asked, “Do you hurt here?” When her hand reached his belly, the moaning ceased and Hayes spoke to her. “I hurt so bad,” he said. “I promise you, we are going to fix this,” Alonzo said, and he thanked her. . . .

Subscribe to The New Yorker.

6 Reasons You Should be Scared of Alzheimer’s & Other Dementias

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1. Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.

2. More than 5 million Americans are living with the disease (I’m guessing this figure does not include Americans living with other types of dementias like FTD).

3. 1 in 3 seniors dies with Alzheimer’s or another dementia.

4. In 2012, 15.4 million caregivers provided more then 17.5 billion hours of unpaid care valued at $216 billion.

5. Nearly 15% of caregivers for people with Alzheimer’s or another dementia are long-distance caregivers.

6. In 2013, Alzheimer’s will cost the nation $203 billion. This number is expected to rise to $1.2 trillion by 2050.

If you haven’t been touched by dementia, you will be. It’s only a matter of time. If you have, then you know more needs to be done in terms of funding and research. WE NEED A CURE!

President Obama Says the “A” Word: Alzheimer’s

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During President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address last Tuesday, he did something pretty remarkable……………………….. he mentioned Alzheimer’s disease in his speech. That was the first time a president has mentioned Alzheimer’s in his #SOTU in 13 years.

13 YEARS!

That’s a lot of years to be quite on this issue.

“Today, our scientists are mapping the human brain to unlock the answers to Alzheimer’s; developing drugs to regenerate damaged organs; devising new material to make batteries ten times more powerful.  Now is not the time to gut these job-creating investments in science and innovation.  Now is the time to reach a level of research and development not seen since the height of the Space Race.”

This mention is a huge step forward in terms of raising awareness of the disease among Americans who have not yet been touched by it. Here’s the thing: We have to make Alzheimer’s disease a big deal. Washington must make this a national priority because Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias (like Frontotemporal dementia, vascular dementia, mixed dementia, Lewy body dementia, etc) will touch everyone in this country, either directly or indirectly…………………………………………………….. remember, calm before the Tsunami.

While we can’t get overly excited by the president’s mention of the disease, it seems pretty obvious that the man knows Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are problem that will cost our country dearly.

So what can we do to make sure Washington knows to make this disease a priority? Well, for starters, you can send an e-mail.

From the folks at the White House:

President Obama’s State of the Union address is just the beginning; now we want to hear from you. Highlight a passage of the speech that was meaningful to you and tell the President how you’re connected to that issue. Then share that part of the speech with your friends.

Click to link to President Obama’s SOTU. 

Spread the word. Post the link to Facebook, to Twitter, to everywhere you can because we have to do something or our Congress will do nothing.

See: Filibuster. 

How You Can Help Stop Alzheimer’s

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Alzheimer’s Registry Aims to Wipe Out Disease

Originally from AARP Blog and posted by 

What if you could play a part in preventing Alzheimer’s disease? Maybe you can. The Phoenix-based Banner Alzheimer’s Institute (BAI) has established an online registry for those at risk of developing a disease affecting more than 5.4 million Americans.

Many signing on are adult sons and daughters involved in the caregiving of a parent with Alzheimer’s. The ultra user-friendly Alzheimer’s Prevention Registry is a national initiative that connects would-be sufferers with researchers. Participants learn the latest developments in the field and have the opportunity to participate in prevention trials. There’s also an online community.

The goal is to get 100,000 people in the registry by next July. Enrollees include Nancy Hetrick, 45, and her three sisters. Hetrick’s father developed early on-set Alzheimer’s in his 50’s. His father (Hetrick’s grandfather) was one of 14 children; all developed the disease.

Hetrick’s mother and her mother’s two siblings also have Alzheimer’s. The younger women plan to participate in any prevention studies for which they’re eligible.

The registry is part of a worldwide effort to tackle a disease that may impact 7.7 million nationwide by 2030.

Research released this month suggests there may be changes in the brain more than two decades before the first signs of Alzheimer’s surface. A study underway between the National Institutes of Health, BAI, the University of Antioquia in Colombia and Genentech is focused on cognitively healthy participants expected to get Alzheimer’s because of family history.

The group is studying 300 Colombians from an extended family who share a rare genetic mutation that usually brings on Alzheimer’s around age 45 and also will involve participants from the United States.

Two Alzheimer’s factoids:

  1. Recent research conducted by Edge Research of 1,024 adults ages 18-75 shows nearly half of American adults have a personal connection to Alzheimer’s
  2. 7 out of 10 worry they or someone they love will have memory loss or Alzheimer’s

Would you consider joining a registry for Alzheimer’s or another disease with a genetic component? What is your biggest worry about getting Alzheimer’s?

Follow Sally Abrahms at www.sallyabrahms.com and on Twitter. Take a look at her November AARP Bulletin story on the emotional side of caregiving.

From Salon.com… My Mom Has Alzheimer’s

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My brother has been caring for her but I think it’s now my turn

By Cary Tennis

Dear Cary,

When my mom first was showing signs of dementia I was adamant that “something must be done” as I got married, started a new career, and quickly had two small children. Naturally, what I did was try to convince my mother to move into town, stop driving her car, and consider visiting a neurologist. My older brother, who lived much closer than my 1,500 plus miles, shrugged like it was no big deal. I should mention that both of us were still in our 30s, one of us (ahem, me) quite at the low end.

Fast-forward almost seven years and now my mother had moved in with my brother, only to move out and into assisted living in the same city where he resides. Not even in the same state where she lived prior to this upheaval, but very close and much more similar culturally, weather-wise, and a million other ways than my own state of California. Much. As my older brother goes through a divorce (no children) and continues on his path of creating, working, and great success, he has grown incredibly frustrated with the burden of caring for a parent with a very rare form of Alzheimer’s. While her facility does do a lot, she has always felt that family should do most of the caretaking and is constantly reaching out to my brother for help. For my part, I visit four times a year to help relieve the burden, and call often. In fact, my brother will tell me when he has a weekend he needs to focus and I’ll check in multiple times to make sure she does not disturb him. Still, it’s not even close to the job my brother has taken on at an early age.

Of course there is guilt. But there is also a determination to protect my own young family and fully commit to those other three people in my home. A gift I never received growing up. But at this point, when my brother gets irritated by every single small thing, I know he is done. Even if she were willing (which she told me once she was not, but hey, she has dementia), I cannot figure out if it’s a good idea to uproot my mother and move her closer to me and to her only grandchildren. My impulse is to do it so I can give her what my brother no longer can. At the same time, if I add caretaking my mother to my already overflowing plate, I worry so much about my children and my husband and my ability to care for them. Also, let’s be honest, I worry about my sanity.

What do I do? And how do I balance what’s best for me, with what’s best for my family living in my own home, and what’s best for the woman who raised me and gave me everything she had available? I mean, really.

Thank you for any insight.

Watching My Mom Forget Who She Is

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Dear Watching My Mom Forget,

This is really sad and this is hard. I suggest you take what is the most manageable and equitable course. If that means moving your mother then move her. There is no perfect solution. So choose the one that is most workable and practical and fair.

This is unlike any other life challenge you have faced. If you are a competent and successful person then you are used to challenges for which there are solutions, in which victory is possible. This is different. There may be victorious moments but its nature is not the nature of a fair battle that might go either way, or a difficult problem that will eventually yield to intense study. This is decline.

Since you are in your 30s, you are attuned to the making of a family, the creating of new life, the upside of things. This is the downside, the ugly, untended, shady back of the hill where no one wants to live, where the sun doesn’t shine and nothing grows and you get an eerie feeling that makes you want to leave. That’s what it’ll be like sometimes if your experience is anything like mine. You love your mother and you want to do the right thing but no amount of preparation can remove the grim strangeness of it, and no matter how perfectly you execute your plan the result is not victory but loss.

You will get through it and there will be some moments of satisfaction and you may at times take some pleasure in seeing what great depths of resilience you have. But even that is a different kind of pleasure. It’s not a joyful look-at-me pleasure. It’s a quiet, well-I-got-through-that pleasure.

And you will get through it. I feel confident of that. You will be taxed to your limit and at times you may feel you are failing but you will get through this and in so doing you will confront certain limits that are not circumstantial and practical but something else, something psychological and spiritual.

Luckily there are resources to call upon and people to ask for help, wonderful people who’ve dedicated their lives to dealing with what happens when people begin to fall apart. You may have some wonderful experiences with them; you may even fall in love with a few, in the way that we fall in love with strangers who rescue us.

It’s going to be tough on you and your family, and all the while, the real drama will be hers: the subjective experience of memory falling away like a house coming to pieces around her. But you will get through it.

Have some hot cocoa. Pray.

From Salon.com

Flickr pic by Mamnaimie