Sep 15 2008
Epidemic of Alzheimers
There are 26 million people in this World with Alzheimer’s disease.
While there is good news on lower rates of chronic respiratory disease like bronchitis and emphysema, and a recent drop in strokes, and heart disease and diabetes deaths have fallen by five percent in recent years, this also means that more of us are living longer. The bad news about “living longer” is that more of us will be afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease; it is now the sixth leading cause of death in the United States.
Those 26 million Alzheimer patients are expected to become over 100 million in the next forty years. That is the prediction from researchers at Johns Hopkins University. (There are a great number of links to resources at the Johns Hopkins Research Center website.)
But the problems of Alzheimer’s not only affects the stricken, it also affects their families. Family caregivers often face many years…even decades…of taking care of their aging spouses, parents and grandparents, while painfully watching them slowly deteriorate. One of the worst aspects of Alzheimer’s is that the mental affliction is so deceptive, as the physical body often remains fit and vibrant. It often takes several minutes of conversation for a stranger to realize that all is not well with an Alzheimer patient.
The decision to move a loved one to a facility, a “locked-down” facility, is a terrible decision to have to make. That decision often follows years and years of exhaustive caregiving, sometimes with little or no respite for the caregiver. Eventually, most Alzheimer patients do require 24 hour institutionalized care. Most of them do okay there.
My own experiences during several visits to an Alzheimer’s care facility were heart-wrenching, and I was amazed by the dedicated staff who work and care for the patients.
Also heart-wrenching is to witness the TOLL that caregiving imposes on a family. My sympathy goes out to them too. Families often face major financial drain and internal conflicts. Survival of CAREGIVERS and FAMILIES depends on their ability to adapt and to seek and accept help from others. There are resources available and I am providing links to some of them here:
The National Alliance for Caregiving
The National Family Caregivers Association
