November is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month
The Alzheimer’s Association is celebrating National Alzheimer’s Disease Awareness Month during the month of November, and, there have been a variety of topics discussed in the media this month.
One of the most prominent ones surrounded retired United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s husband.
John O’Connor has Alzheimer’s Disease and is in a nursing home, and, he’s found a new love, and, she’s happy for him. Due to the sort term memory effects of the disease, many AD patients forget their spouses, and, fall in love with someone else.
But, experts say these new connections aren’t what they seem:
“You’ve got to remember that this isn’t about passion,” says Powers, a geriatric psychiatrist and chairman of the medical advisory board for the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America. “This is about two people trying to find friendship and companionship because they’re lonely and lost and oftentimes frightened.”
There’s also a moving article in Newsweek by Patti Davis, the daughter of former United States President Ronald Reagan, who had Alzheimer’s, in response to Justice O’Connor’s situation that tells us of everything you have to let go when someone has this disease:
If you’ve lived through having a loved one with Alzheimer’s, you know that all you want for them is comfort and happiness. Memory is secondary; you learn to put that into perspective early on. To those who have not watched close up Alzheimer’s inexorable conquest, it must seem odd that a wife would adjust to this, that she even could.
Her article is a must read, go read the rest.
Tags: Alzheimers-Awareness, Alzheimers-Disease, Patti-Davis, Ronald-Reagan, Sandra-Day-OConnor, sandwich-generationRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Aging, Aging Parents
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