Best 147 quotes in «alzheimer's quotes» category

Biomedicine locates sickness in a specific place in an individual body: a headache, a stomachache a torn knee, lung cancer. Medical anthropologists instead locate sickness and health in three interconnected bodies: the political, the social, and the physical. The prevailing political economy impacts the distribution of sickness and health in a society and the means available to heal those who are sick. For example, poor individuals worldwide are more exposed to toxins that make them sick, while the rich stay healthier. The social body constructs the meanings and experiences surrounding particular physical states. It determines the ideal physical body, legitimizing biomedical practices like plastic surgery to attain it. The social body also determines the boundaries of the physical body. Some cultures locate sickness not in individuals but instead in families or communities. As any caregiver knows, we live the sickness too. And while biomedicine can cure diseases it flounders with permanent hurts, troubles of the mind, states present from birth or that are incurable or progressive. In biomedicine, these states are stigmatized and feared. We medical anthropologists have a term for this: social death.

But I knew he wouldn't kiss me. Not tonight. Not like this. There was too much between us now, all the words and near misses. All the potential, the alternate futures that would stretch out before us in an unending spiral, all built on what happened in this moment. I held his fiery gaze and remembered the five-oh, the half-and-half, the promises I'd whispered to myself in the dawn light. I might lose all my memories one day, but that wouldn't keep me from making them.

Caregiving will never be one-size-fits-all.

Dying from an aggressive fatal brain tumor is like dying from Alzheimer's disease accelerated one hundred times.

Even though people experiencing dementia become unable to recount what has just happened, they still go through the experience—even without recall. The psychological present lasts about three seconds. We experience the present even when we have dementia. The emotional pain caused by callous treatment or unkind talk occurs during that period. The moods and actions of people with dementia are expressions of what they have experienced, whether they can still use language and recall, or not.

I believe that most caregivers find that they inherit a situation where they just kind of move into caregiving. It's not a conscious decision for most caregivers, and they are ultimately left with the responsibility of working while still trying to be the caregiver, the provider, and the nurturer.- Sharon Law Tucker

I can’t stand the thought of looking at you someday, this face I love, and not knowing who you are.

I'd like to go home now,' she said softly. She hoped someone would show her the way.

I don’t know how much longer I have to know you.

I look at people and I don't know them. Yesterday, I spent twenty minutes trying to figure out who the grumpy woman sitting beside me was before I realized it was your mother. [...] I've led a rich life, Henry, but I'm terrified of dying a pauper.

Dementia: Is it more painful to forget, or to be forgotten?

Dementia isn’t the only place that memories are found to be flawed—people find out they can’t rely on their memories every day. People blindsided in relationships. People who find out their truth is a lie. People pulled from trauma. People awakened, as in Anna and Eve. I wondered: If you can’t use memories to steer your life, what can you use? I didn’t know. It was why I had to write this book.

I miss myself." "I miss you too, Ali, so much." "I never planned to get like this." "I know.

I pray for my mother. That if she can't ever recover what she's lost or what she's losing, that she not feel like she's lost. I pray that we make her feel necessary and valued as long as possible. That she comes to know comfort, even if I can't provide it myself.

I read of a Buddhist teacher who developed Alzheimer's. He had retired from teaching because his memory was unreliable, but he made one exception for a reunion of his former students. When he walked onto the stage, he forgot everything, even where he was and why. However, he was a skilled Buddhist and he simply began sharing his feelings with the crowd. He said, "I am anxious. I feel stupid. I feel scared and dumb. I am worried that I am wasting everyone's time. I am fearful. I am embarrassing myself." After a few minutes of this, he remembered his talk and proceeded without apology. The students were deeply moved, not only by his wise teachings, but also by how he handled his failings. There is a Buddhist saying, "No resistance, no demons.

It's like you don't get that she's not gone yet, like you think her time left isn't meaningful anymore. You're acting like a selfish child.

I've had an amazing life. One filled with blessings I could never have imagined. Depressed is the last thing I am. Realistic, yes. Sad, never.

Je ne te l’ai jamais dit, mais j’ai cru pendant des années que si l’un de nous deux devait perdre la tête, ce serait moi. La tienne était beaucoup trop précieuse, beaucoup trop acclamée pour que je puisse m’imaginer qu’elle s’égare, mais j’avais oublié que les choses précieuses sont souvent les plus fragiles.

I love you but I got to love me more.

My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it’s a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recorded events when my mind was unaffected. My emotional memory is intact too, perhaps because feelings are recorded and stored in a different place than facts. The things that happened deeper in the past, and deeper in the breast, are still there for me, under the water. I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces. 'Pat should get a tattoo!' The kids laughed. 'What kind should she get?' 'A heart. She should get a heart.' Little did they know. They are the tattoos.

If you knew you were going to lose your memory but you could choose five things you’d never forget, what would they be— a certain face, a taste, a scent, a touch; how deep in this, the middle of your life?

Many of us follow the commandment 'Love One Another.' When it relates to caregiving, we must love one another with boundaries. We must acknowledge that we are included in the 'Love One Another.

Never give up hope. If you do, you'll be dead already.--Dementia Patient, Rose from The Inspired Caregiver

Offering care means being a companion, not a superior. It doesn’t matter whether the person we are caring for is experiencing cancer, the flu, dementia, or grief. If you are a doctor or surgeon, your expertise and knowledge comes from a superior position. But when our role is to be providers of care, we should be there as equals.

Someday, I suppose I’ll give up, and sit in the rocking chair. But I’ll probably be rocking fast, because I don’t know what I’ll do without a job.

She could always walk somewhere without him. Of course this somewhere had to be somewhere "safe." She could walk to her office. But she didn't want to go to her office. She felt bored, ignored, and alienated in her office. She felt ridiculous there. She didn't belong there anymore. In all the expansive grandeur that was Harvard, there wasn't room there for a cognitive psychology professor with a broken cognitive psyche.

Some older or very ill patients may not be suitable candidates for fecal transfer. Colonoscopy is an invasive procedure, especially for those patients who are too ill with other conditions like cancer, heart failure, dialysis, or Alzheimer’s.

The association between the post-encephalitic syndrome and demyelination or incomplete myelination of the brain seems quite secure. And the fact that encephalitis -including that caused by vaccination- can cause demyelination has been known since the 1920's!

Tears water our eyes. "Remember," mom soothes, "like the beautiful blooms beneath the weeds, Nana is still Nana underneath.

The day the roles reverse is foreign. It’s a clumsy dance of love and responsibility, not wanting to cross any lines of respect. It’s honoring this person who gave their life to you—not to mention literally gave you life—and taking their fragile body in your hands like a newborn, tending to their every need.

The literature has only these words of comfort for a patient and her family at this stage. Remember, there is still a living spirit inside this diminished person, the spirit of someone you love.

What made Olive the saddest about the Gardners was that everyone wanted to be enshrined in someone’s memory. It was the only way of living on after death, really: in the minds of loved ones. Memories were the only things that made aging bearable, a way of reverting to better, simpler days.

The reason I might forget something is because my mind is like a computer. I have so much useless stuff stored up in there, that when I forget to clean out my Mind's Cache, it has no room for new information. Like wearing pants!

They say you can never step into the same river twice. And maybe that's how it was for Papi now, memories shifting and re-forming soundlessly beneath him while the rest of us sat on the shore and watched.

Was the dementia of old age a blessing in disguise? No more thoughts. No more damage inflicted. No more memories of damage survived.

So about an hour later we are in the taxi shooting along empty country roads towards town. The April light is clear as an alarm. As we pass them it gives a sudden sense of every object existing in space on its own shadow. I wish I could carry this clarity with me into the hospital where distinctions tend to flatten and coalesce. I wish I had been nicer to him before he got crazy. These are my two wishes.

While no one can change the outcome of dementia or Alzheimer's, with the right support you can change the journey.

You only know yourself because of your memories.

You will never experience personal growth, if you fear taking chances. And, you will never become successful, if you operate without integrity.

Alzheimer's caregivers are heroes.

Alzheimer's disease is death before death, and I'm terrified of it.

Alzheimer's disease locks all the doors and exits. There is no reprieve, no escape.

Alzheimer's is a family disease...It requires countless hours of care, which are typically provided by family caregivers...Wi thout professional help, it can be impossible to juggle providing that care with jobs, raising kids or just time for yourself.

Although there have been warnings that it was coming for years, the Alzheimer's epidemic is here now and millions more families will be touched by this progressive - and ultimately fatal - disease unless its course can be altered.

Alzheimer's ... it is a barren disease, as empty and lifeless as a desert. It is a thief of hearts and souls and memories.

Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, brain and spinal cord disorders, diabetes, cancer, at least 58 diseases could potentially be cured through stem cell research, diseases that touch every family in America and in the world.

Alzheimer's is a devastating disease. It was painful for me and my family to watch my grandfather deteriorate. We must find a cure for this horrible disease.

Alzheimer's usually comes later than AIDS, but I decline to call that progress.

Americans whisper the word Alzheimer's because their government whispers the word Alzheimer's. And although a whisper is better than the silence that the Alzheimer's community has been facing for decades, it's still not enough. It needs to be yelled and screamed to the point that it finally gets the attention and the funding that it deserves and needs.

Before my mother's diagnosis with Alzheimer's, I had heard of the disease, but hadn't known anyone who had suffered from it.