Poems and essays taking the reader through the ravaging stages of Alzheimer's disease from the perspective of a spouse. Includes and introduction and an afterword comparing the symptoms of this debilitating disease to aspects of American society. Worldwide projections of the incidence of dementia of the Alzheimer’s type indicate that by the year 2020, twenty-million persons will suffer from this disease. Each one of this astounding number will probably feel isolated, terrified, and increasingly burdened before becoming oblivious; their caregivers will experience an even greater magnitude of such feelings as they watch their loved ones advance in the disease, helpless to prevent its inevitable course. Oblivion will not occur for them. It is for the comfort of these caregivers that this book is written.
Just as loss of memory, disorientation to time, place, and person, wandering behavior and personality changes characterize Alzheimer’s disease, so, perhaps, does our American social system suffer from parallel symptoms. The author closes her personal account with some observations about our wider cultural proclivities toward dementia driven behaviors and asks whether or not we might have a social form of Alzheimer’s disease.
