Chicken Soup for the Soul living with Alzheimer’s

From the story reprinted here, this book, which benefits the Alzheimer’s’ Society will also benefit those who read it, with its heart-warming stories of the survival of love and compassion.

And it might benefit the larger society, by showing the person beneath the disease, and how that person can be still present and lived with and loved.

With the enormous number of people (millions and millions) now struggling to live with Alzheimer’s, as patients or caregivers, I am beginning to think our biggest challenge is to make living with Alzheimer’s as normal as living with cancer. Forty or fifty years ago, cancer was only whispered about. Now people are open about their struggles, and so they get much social support, right down to classes of children shaving their heads to support friends undergoing chemo.

I wonder if that kind of acceptance (and understanding in society of how to behave with the patient) might help ease some of the heartache and fear we caregivers go through, so often alone?