Just Love Me: My Life Turned Upside-Down by Alzheimers (Purdue Series on Ageing & Care) [Paperback]

Jeanne Lee (Author)

Book Description

Series: Purdue Series on Ageing & Care | Publication Date: March 15, 2003

Just Love Me reveals the thoughts and emotions of a woman struggling with a suddenly unmanageable life; numerous hospitalizations, suicide attempts, everyday turmoil, and finally, the arduous search for an accurate diagnosis of the illness responsible for it all: Alzheimer's disease (AD). This account is unique in that most books on the subject of Alzheimer's are written by a carepartner or medical professional. There are very few books actually written by a person living with the disease, and Just Love Me should be required reading for anyone who has any contact with a person afflicted with AD. This book is especially helpful for anyone related by birth, marriage, friendship, or those people who have a professional relationship with Alzheimer's sufferers. Jeanne Lee's very personal, frank description of her life experiences before, approaching, and during the early stages of AD enables readers to better understand the disease from the inside out; a view not often seen by non-sufferers. By getting inside the mind of the author and experiencing with her the worries and frustrations that constantly torment her, the symptoms of AD become less enigmatic for the reader.

Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Purdue University Press; 1 edition (March 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557532982
• ISBN-13: 978-1557532985
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,378,673 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This life is a many-splendored thing., May 3, 2003

By 

M KIRK-DUGGAN "Reverse Mike" (El Cerrito Fellowship, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Just Love Me: My Life Turned Upside-Down by Alzheimers (Purdue Series on Ageing & Care) (Paperback)

One could say that this book has a misleading subtitle: It would appear that Jeanne L. Lee's life has turned right side up because of her diagnosis of Alzheimer's.
She says it like it is for her, and much of what she describes is true for this reader who has come to grips with his own diagnoses of Alzheimer's, unipolar depression, obesity, kidney failure, alcoholism, emphysema, and now diabetics, all within the last two years.
Page after page she describes the various conditions of depression, alcoholism, dropping, forgetting, losing words, endless tests, denial by physicians, et al,, which plague all of us.
But thanks to the diagnosis, she is able to confront the denial of early continued sexual abuse, her own and her father's alcoholism, and multiple relationships.
The book is jumpy, and disjointed, but that is the nature of this species of dementia. Many of us demented ones have a huge sigh of relief, when all the eliminations are done, and the only culprit remaining is Alzheimer's,
This is not a book for those professionals who are determined to establish that those of us with the disease have no valid information to share with them. This is not a book for those who are only interested in working with the caregivers. This is not a book for those who say why do anything meaningful, since we won't remember the patterns anyhow. This is not a book for those who flaunt memory improvement exercises which deny the loss of the ability to learn. This is not a book for those who talk, but do not listen. It is a book for the rest of us.
Her main title says it all for this ALZer: "Just Love Me." But this love comes at a high price in the face of vincible ignorance.
We will talk, even if the words are jumbled. We will read, even if the continuity disappears. We will listen, even if the sentences disappear into a black hole. But most of all, we will love, even when we are not loved by those around us.
Lee has shown us the way out of our tunnels of loneliness and despair.
Lee says: "I know there are many people out there who neeeed to hear from others, like themselves, that it's okay to goof up; it's okay to do stupid things; it's part of what's happening to this body and brain. But it doesn't have to be all bad. There is so much good, and so much you can still do. So what if you can't remember somebody's name. You can still say hello to a little old lady. You can still give flowers to soneone . You can still look at the ocean [like I did on a Senir Retreat last week] and say, 'Oh God, I'm so lucky.'" And thanks to this book, that is exactly how I will spend my time remaining. Thank you Jeanne.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must to Learn About the disease, October 6, 2003

By 

Dr.Elizabeth Davis (Honolulu) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Just Love Me: My Life Turned Upside-Down by Alzheimers (Purdue Series on Ageing & Care) (Paperback)

This book has been such an eye-opener that I gave it to friends. As a caregiver to my mother with late stage Alzheimer, it was such a revelation for me to understand what she was going through. When see the fear and frustration on my mother's face when she knows she should remember something or when she is pretty sure that what she just said doesn't make sense,I remember the title of Jeanne's to "just love" her. All the stories that the author tells of forgetting what she meant to add to the conversation or blanking on the alphabetical order are all things that I watched my mother go through. I would get so frustrated with my mother when she erratically think we were going some place else or ask about someone who is dead. Now thanks to "Just Love Me" My Life Turned Upside-down By Alzheimer's, I know to just give my mother a smile or a hug. I know she can still appreciate the beauty of a sunset even though she sometimes forgets my name. And I know that she never asked to have Alzheimer's and that it is much more painful for her than it is for me.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended!, June 16, 2003

By 

Larry James (Scottsdale, AZ USA - Larry James - CelebrateLove.com) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Just Love Me: My Life Turned Upside-Down by Alzheimers (Purdue Series on Ageing & Care) (Paperback)

A riveting account of Jeanne Lee's personal journey into the misunderstood world of Alzheimer's. Her story is sad, but allows the reader to get inside the mind of someone whose fears, frustration and worries about this mind-tangling disease provides a road map for us to be forever living in the moment. - Larry James, CelebrateLove.com, Author, "How to Really Love the One You're With"