Customer Reviews

Fierce Blessing: A Journey into Alzheimer's, Compassion, and the Joy of Being

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This is the most extraordinary memoir I've ever read, and also one of the best resources I know for families coping with Alzheimer's. It's a literary narrative that's the story of life itself: lived long, lived hard, and ultimately lived well. With humor and candor, the authors share their confusion, frustration and hard-won clarity, sweeping readers along for their heart-rending yet heart-warming journey through the worlds of dementia, chronic illness and long term care.
It's a readable, sometimes rollicking tale of family life, family conflict and coming to peace, told with honesty and compassion. Its painful insights and poignant inspiration make it essential reading for anyone involved with Alzheimer's disease or long term care, showing all of the ugliness and all of the astonishing joy and beauty of both.
In my professional capacity, I've read dozens of caregivers' books, but this is the one I recommend to caregivers for content, and to readers who love the written word.
If you're beginning the journey, read it for guidance; if you've completed this journey, read it for comfort and perspective; and if you're not on this journey, read it for sheer delight.
Fierce Blessing is a remarkable story, superbly told, and a glorious gift to caregivers or any other reader in need of respite, resolve, or restoration of the spirit.

This book provides the reader with great insight into what a family goes through when someone is diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. The authors relate with love and compassion their journey caring for a family member. Their frustrations,fears, daily challenges and blessings inspire both laughter and tears. As a Registered Nurse with nearly 30 years experience, I highly recommend this book for family members, care providers, and anyone who wants to better understand the joys and sorrows that come with this diagnosis.
Laura Allender, BSN, RN, MS

I think anyone who comes in contact with Alzheimer's would want to know about this book. Wayne and Terry Baltz wrote Fierce Blessing, a Journey Into Alzheimer's, Compassion, and the Joy of Being, a memoir detailing the experience of caring for Terry's mother who lived through and died from Alzheimer's disease.

Fierce Blessing is a finalist for the 2004 Book of the Year Award in the State of Colorado. Once you read it, you will understand why.

Wayne and Terry have such a loving and patient way of looking at everything and treating everyone but even they were pushed to their limits during the years of living with and watching the deterioration of a parent whose brain was slowly giving way. This book shares the experience of day-to-day problems, joys, emotional upheavals, the chuckles and tears of living and caring for a dear mother who seems to no longer be your dear mother.

It's mesmerizing -- sweet, frustrating, funny, infuriating, loving. I hope you will all read and enjoy and pass this book along to your friends.

Co-authored by Wayne and Terry Baltz, Fierce Blessing: A Journey Into Alzheimer's Compassion, And The Joy Of Being is a meaningful memoir about coping with the slow but remorseless progression of Alzheimer's disease in a loved one. Told almost in a day-by-day journal format, Fierce Blessing reveals the personal experience with honesty, depth, and bittersweet love. Highly recommended reading for anyone having to deal with the problems of Alzheimer's in a friend or family member.

I read Fierce Blessing with great interest as I am a caregiver for my Grandmother who suffers from Alzheimer's disease. It was enlightening to read this book in which the authors' detailed their experiences with Alzheimer's and caring for their Mother. I could completely relate to the trials and tribulations that they faced and appreciate reading that other families have had similar challenges with regard to caring for a relative with this terrible disease.

An example that I found fascinating about this book is that one of the authors' biggest challenges was something as simple as the basic human need for a drink of water. While my Grandmother is served water and juice at every meal in her nursing home, the authors' write how they continually struggled with the staff at their mother's nursing home to provide her with a simple glass of water at mealtime. It amazes me that something as simple as a drink of water could be overlooked by nursing home staff.

I would recommend this book to family, friends, nursing home staff, and anyone who cares for a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease. The authors, Wayne and Terry Baltz, should be commended for sharing their "Fierce Blessing" with the world.

Fierce Blessing is aptly named. The book, written by Wayne and Terry Baltz, relates their touching personal journey through their mother's experience with Alzheimer's Disease (AD). In some ways, it's like watching home movies, only it's engaging and very real. It is written in a kind of diary format, chronologically revealing the frustrations, absurdities, and joys of a daughter and son-in-law seeking to cope with a mother's devastating illness. We enter the story of Terry and Wayne, and Terry's mother shortly after diagnosis. About the first third of the book speaks to the struggles of coming to terms with the realities of the illness, with the capabilities they have as caregivers, and with the instability of Terry's mother. AD often rewires the emotional composition of it's victims, making them angry, inappropriate, and sometimes violent. Wayne and Terry encounter the first two for certain, and possibly the third, as they meet and meander their way through a very broken long term care system.

This, the inadequacies of the long term care system, is perhaps the second, and maybe unintended, subject of this book. As daughter and son-in-law seek to meet their financial obligations they find themselves in a smaller and smaller box, forcing them to find alternative care arrangements, ultimately leading to nursing home placement. As one who works primarily in the long term care setting, this is where the book rings especially true for me. It is a constant battle for them to get the care that they believe Terry's mother needs. The care of the various facilities is marked by lack of competence, poor communication, ineptitude, and most of all, blatant condescension and coercion. One core example of the battles they face is the continuous, unabated struggle to get the staff to give mom water. They will give her everything but water. One suspects that they would give her motor oil before giving her water, if only because the family wants her to have water. And the most angering thing about this battle is that it is a battle that is inane, unnecessary, and stupid. At no point does it seem to occur to anyone on the facility staffs that they might decrease a lot of everyone's struggles by giving this poor woman some water without having to be supervised, monitored or reported.

The hard part about writing reviews is the mention of the parts you struggled with. This is so in this review as well. Wayne and Terry are thoroughly likeable people based on the commitments they have made to the betterment of the world, and from their defining role as caregivers, as evidenced by what is written in the book.

Despite the problems Wane and Terry encounter - problems that are, at times, unethical, if not illegal - the difficulties, in our opinion, do not all lie with the facilities. The war between the various doctors and facilities (though not all) and Wayne and Terry seems almost constant.

In the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean", the worldly-wise pirate Jack Black, instructs one of the other characters in living of life: He tells him that in order to succeed, "You must know two things: What you can do and what you can't do."¯ Similarly, the authors of Fierce Blessing seemed unwilling, at times, to face what long term care can do and what it can't do. Of course, it's their mom they're caring for, so this is understandable. But, it is also incumbent upon family to accept what can and can't be done, if it is reasonable (which, by the way, the refusal to give water is not reasonable!).

Long term care facilities are underfunded, are staffed by people who are underpaid, who regularly take some terrible abuse, from both patient and family. At the rates that LTC staff are paid, it is nearly impossible to keep good help. Nursing home staff often feel disparaged, abused and hurt by families. I know, I hear it all the time. These are some of the realities of long term care. Long term care facilities aren't family and rarely do they become such.

There is a point in the book where Terry seems to come to this recognition, seems to arrive at an understanding that the relationship to the nursing home is not good for anyone, not for them, not for the facility, and not good for her mom. I cheer for them at that point. The motto might be: "Accept what they can give, be grateful for what they can give, and fight only when you have to." It was the continual battle between the nursing home and family that constituted the most frustrating, and also very real, aspect of the book for me.

Of course, I've never had one of my loved ones in a long term care facility. I fear to think what it might be like.

Nonetheless, Fierce Blessing has many moments, poignant and beautiful moments, when everyone seems to realize what is happening and what needs to be done. These are the moments that we all should live for, the times when we quit talking at each other, look each other squarely in the eye, and talk to each other. It is a book that should be read. Indeed, long term care staff everywhere should be required to read it.

Fierce Blessing is a worthy book from a caring family who made enormous sacrifices to keep their loved one with them as much, as long, and as comfortably as possible. It is the story of a woman who struggles with her diminishing self, wracked with a terrible and mind-altering illness. It is painful evidence of the wrong that is our system of care for the elderly. It is, finally, an accounting of the way we love and the way we let go.

If you are a family member dealing with Alzheimer's, I would recommend this book. It is sad and yet funny. I could certainly relate to it and it made me feel that I am not alone. My only criticism is that it was hard to follow at times since the writers alternate who is speaking.