February 02, 2015

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

MUST READS

A January 31, 2015 NPR article profiled journalist Greg O'Brien's life after an Alzheimer's diagnosis. According to O'Brien, "The doctors told me that I needed to turn everything that I had over to my wife. I'm not allowed to own anything anymore. That was a difficult thing for me because our house on Cape Cod, which I had built, was exactly the kind of home that I wanted to live in and raise my children in. And now I felt that I was a renter. And that was the beginning of the stripping away of my identity. And I knew no one got that but me. You know, God bless all the doctors and many of the caregivers in the world, but it's really the people who are fighting through early Alzheimer's who ... who get it. And ... now I forgot the rest of your question. Can you repeat it?"

A January 30, 2015 New York Times article reported on the risk of financial abuse of Alzheimer's sufferers. According to the article, "Just as vexing is the abuse of someone with Alzheimer’s by a family member, caregiver or grifter. Hebrew Home established the first shelter for abused elderly people in 2005, and Mr. Reingold said about 60 percent of its clients suffered from some form of dementia. “There is almost always an underlying financial issue — Mom didn’t give me the money so I pushed her down the stairs,” Mr. Reingold said. “Each case is different, but what’s typical is there is always coercion and control.” Red flags include an elderly relative suddenly spending time with a new, younger friend — or an adult child or distant relative moving in. Putting good checks in place is not hard but it requires foresight: regular visits by someone who is trusted to monitor someone’s appearance, automated deposits and bill payments, and conversations with bank tellers or doormen who know the elderly person’s patterns."

A January 30, 2015 Washington Post opinion piece by Michael R. Auslin underscored the impact of dementia on caregivers and families. According to Auslin, "Despite the long-shot comebacks that sometimes happen for patients in other situations, there is nothing that can restore my father or the millions like him. Worse, there is nothing that can delay his inevitable descent. As adults, we give lip service to the idea that we can’t control the world around us, but most of us don’t really understand what that means until we’re faced with a curse like my father’s. We don’t really believe that a lifetime of work and plans can be erased by the crumbling of our minds or bodies…When he was diagnosed in 2006, he became one of at least 5 million Americans suffering from some version of Alzheimer’s or dementia…Our medical system simply does not have any other answers for so many like my father and can offer little hope to millions of families. I had never once thought death could be preferable to life. But now I know that is not true, and whatever child was left in me has died as well." Michael R. Auslin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.


CULTURE

A February 2, 2015 Associated Press (via NYT) article highlighted Alzheimer's issues touched on by the film "Still Alice." According to the article, "The movie "Still Alice" is raising awareness of a disease too often suffered in isolation, even if the Hollywood face is younger than the typical real-life patient. Some things to know about Alzheimer’s:…The Obama administration has declared a goal of finding effective Alzheimer's treatments by 2025. Research suggests Alzheimer's begins silently ravaging the brain up to 20 years before symptoms begin. One approach under study now is testing to see whether curbing sticky amyloid during that window period might at least postpone symptoms a few more years, if not prevent them."

A January 31, 2015 NPR article reported that acclaimed writer Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snickett, has included a character with Alzheimer's in his new book We Are Pirates. According to the article, "DANIEL HANDLER: "We Are Pirates" has a major character who is suffering from Alzheimer's. That was a condition that I knew very little about. And I thought it would be appropriate if the older man who becomes the head of a ragtag group of pirates - if he had Alzheimer's because losing grip of reality would make it more believable that he might embark on such a voyage. But I didn't know anything aside from the broadest cultural stereotypes about the disease. And then as fate would have it, my father began to suffer from it. And I had put the novel aside, and then suddenly I, in fact, had a front-row seat with exactly the sort of mind-leaving that dementia provides. I used to think when other writers told me that they put books aside for a year and then return to them - I used to think they were lying. I used to think that was their way of saying that actually they were just running a year behind. But as it turns out, other writers knew something. Who knew?"

A January 31, 2015 NPR article highlighted Super Bowl champion Dwight Hicks' worries about Alzheimer's and football. According to the article, "It wasn't until the early 2000s, Hicks says, that he realized there might be another injury he needed to worry about. That's when more and more retired players began reporting symptoms of early onset Alzheimer's. Others showed the personality changes, rage and depression that can be signs of a type of brain deterioration called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, first diagnosed in boxers in the 1960s. "It wasn't scary," Hicks says, "until some of the prominent players — guys that I knew, some of the guys that I played against — started to have this problem.""