Sep 10, 2001 11:22 AM
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The author gently touches the disease of Alzheimer's. I wish I had had the book before I became a caregiver to my grandmother. If you have a loved one or know a friend who has a loved one with Alzheimer's this book will be very helpful.
It is hard to understand the disease at first. The book gently leads you to what Alzheimer's is and what it does. It slowly steals the person away from you bit by bit. They have no idea what is wrong. They just begin to forget things. Now we all forget things like where our car keys are or where we put the pen you wrote your last check with. With Alzheimers it begins like that but gradually gets worse. Soon you forget how to run the hair dryer or even the car. You get lost in the store and have no idea who you came with. The is how it started with my grandmother. Grandpop took her shopping like they always went and suddenly she was walking away from him. He reached to touch her arm, she turned around with a terrified look in her eyes and wanted to know who the h- he was. Grandpop was crushed. Now to help you get an idea of how devastating this was to him, he and grandmom had been married since 1939. This happened in 1995.
The book gently details how it will effect your life on a daily basis and how to try to manage with the changes. They are not easy and sometimes make you crazy. You may open the frig one day to find the shampoo in there because that is where it needs to be and you just roll along with it.
I think one think that was not very well mentioned was the true reach of the disease. As a caregiver I realized it not only effected my mom, (it is her mother), myself but my father, my husband and my children outside of grandpop who lived with it daily for over 4 years alone. No one tells you of the heart wrenching decisions you begin to make for your parents or grandparents as far as an Adult Daycare is concerned or even that you will be consumed with over whelming guilt for being angry at the disease of robbing you of many happy years.
I also think not mentioned but maybe needs to be in an updated version is the statistics of suicide by a husband or wife of an Alzheimer's patient. We know of this first hand. After 60 years of marriage, 6 years of slowly losing his Jenny. My grandfather took his life on Easter Sunday of this year. No one can ever really understand the pain of losing a loved one to this disease unless you are living it and it is no place to be.
There of course is always hope and the book leaves you with that thought. Medical Science has come so far over the last few years that maybe soon there will be some answers. They have found the gene that causes the disease and they are doing much research on stem cells. That raises many more issues that the book does not touch but it was written years before these things were discovered.
Over all the book is a Godsend if you will. It landed in my lap and has stayed as a good friend.
Book Title: A Long Goodbye and Beyond, Coping with Alzheimers
Author: Linda Combs. Ed. D.
Paperback
September 1998
List Price:$12.95
Illustrated, 160 pages
BookPartners, Incorporated
ISBN 1-88522-1835
