|
Post by Samson Adewale on Jun 2, 2016 17:35:14 GMT -4
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a very sad an unfortunate neurodegenerative disease. This article is another story of a victim of the disease. By reading this article, there is one thing that is absolutely clear to me and that is as future health care providers we must ensure that we must do everything in our intellectual power to make certain patients who fall victim to AD receive the highest quality of healthcare. High quality healthcare includes making an early diagnosis, providing up-to-date treatments that will relieve and delay symptoms, recommend behavior modifications that will delay disease progression etc. Health care providers demonstrate this by utilizing resources such as up-to-date for current diagnosis and treatment protocols, peer-review articles, researching promising clinical trials, and so on. For example, a new experimental drug called Gantenerumab, is suppose to help lower the toxic proteins that accumulate in the brain, this will help improve and protect against memory loss, and other AD symptoms.
|
|
|
Post by mElajami on Jun 2, 2016 18:33:41 GMT -4
A truly heart-felt story, well written with extreme details to the everyday hardships of individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer’s have to deal with on a daily basis. In addition, it discusses the effects of their condition on the environment around them; where in this case her husband: Mr. Taylor having to learn and cope to his wife’s condition. I believe it is extremely important for patients’ family members and close friend to be educated about the disease in detail so they will have a full understanding or even try to relate to the effected individual in some way or the other. Alzheimer’s is one of those diseases where an effected person cannot care for themselves; they should be taken care of constantly, thus, an understanding of this condition will help. It’s a truly life altering experience for the patient and their loved ones.
|
|
|
Post by Michael Morris on Jun 2, 2016 18:44:23 GMT -4
According to the alz.org website, it is estimated that up to 40 percent of people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease concurrently suffer from significant depression. Something that jumped out at me early on in this article was the concern Mrs. Taylor, as well as her therapist, had for avoiding rejection from her friends. This is something I had never considered when contemplating the effects Alzheimer’s. It is easy to assume that depression in such a patient would be a result of facing down the prospect of having a painfully slow decline in cognitive function until eventual death. Being stricken with such an illness is bad enough, but to have your friends turn your back on you must be downright devastating.
|
|
Christina Richardson
Guest
|
Post by Christina Richardson on Jun 2, 2016 21:22:38 GMT -4
I am guilty of not really understanding the magnitude of difficulty that Alzheimer’s disease places on daily life and functioning. I just thought of Alzheimer’s disease as a sickness that makes those afflicted forget family members and places. This article help me to understand that people affected with the disease often forget the steps to carrying out daily activities. For example, attempting to shave and forgetting shaving cream. I also did not know that Alzheimer’s disease affected vision and sometimes makes a person develop a tremor. I think it is very courageous that Ms. Taylor is being optimistic and appreciating everything in her life. She is trying to make the most use of the rest of her life while she still has some cognition left. I really admire that she did not decide to take her diagnosis as a death sentence and as a result go in to seclusion and be depressed. In a dark moment her life, she seemed to find a purpose and help spread education and awareness about the disease. It was really interesting that she promoted learning to live with the disease by using “strategies.” Ms. Taylor was not satisfied when her thoughts and memories would become were scrambled. An example a strategy was associating her neighbors that lived on her floor with someone in her family to somehow remember her neighbor’s names.
|
|
|
Post by Sammy Janus on Jun 2, 2016 22:51:49 GMT -4
This was a perfect article describing the devastation and struggles endured by families with Alzheimer's diagnoses. I think the author captures it perfectly when she says that everyone around the patient gets caught in the disease's undertow. Some people are able to swim out of it whereas others can get lost to the current. In other words, the depression and overwhelming devestation and desperation of the situation may be too much for some people who were originally looked to as friends. I recently witnessed my friend deal with the death and decline of her grandma this past year. She describes this undertow phenomenon as the true test of friendship- the aquantainces and casual friends convienently fade out. As she detailed to me, there are two facts to come to terms with: the idea that death is lurking around the corner and more so watching someone you've always looked up to fade away day by day.
My friend always inspires me when she speaks about her grandma and how she has influenced her life. She has taught me that even in the endstages of the disease we should never dismiss the patient or neglect them of the care they deserve. Just because they are unresponsive or don't recognize your presence in the room means their "facetime" with you should be any less. Instead, it should encourage us to spend more time with them and talk to them.
The article also beautifully outlines the grieving process of Geri's husband and friends. This should be a reminder to us as clinicians that a huge part of caring for an Alzheimer's patient is to care for the mental health of their family. Keeping the patient's support group in "good" spirits is just another avenue of patient care. We can guide them to therapists, Alzheimer's support groups, and nursing facilities/caretaker resources.
|
|
|
Post by Abhinandan Bhagat on Jun 3, 2016 20:31:40 GMT -4
This is a very descriptive story of a women suffering from a debilitating and frustrating disease known as Alzheimer's. Being a nurse herself, she saw first hand what this disease has done to her patients. Although we can sympathize with our patients, we can never truly understand what our patients and their family members go through, unless we are personally affected by it as are Mr. and Mrs. Taylor. This is a disease that shows up unexpectedly, it can effect any of us, and with a mean survival time of 10 years, this is a deadly disease and is more than just an inconvenience. What makes it scary is the fact that it only goes downhill as time goes on, I mean there are drugs that can slow the progression of the disease, but there is no cure for Alzheimer's as of present. Reading this article really gave me a feeling of uneasiness; the way Mrs. Taylor loses her perception of time, and feels like a stranger that's trapped inside of a cage. Even with all these hurdles, the optimism and dedication for their relationship shown by this couple is applaudable. Alzheimer's disease may have affected this family, but it has not tarnished their will power.
|
|
Joyce Nimo-Boampong
Guest
|
Post by Joyce Nimo-Boampong on Jun 5, 2016 23:30:56 GMT -4
Alzheimer’s disease is not only frustrating for the patient but can have a tremendous impact on his/her whole family at large. It takes a lot of bravery to come out and share such experience with people and to give some of us insight into the ordeals patients endure with Alzheimer’s disease. I can only image how frightening it might feel not to recognize your face in a mirror as Mrs. Taylor experienced initially. With the support of her husband, it was the best decision to seek treatment and group therapy sessions even though none would change the progression of the disease. Such articles are good enough as tools to empower us as caregivers to understand and be even more compassionate in dealing with cognitively impaired individuals.
|
|
|
Post by Ali Reza Ahmed on Aug 1, 2016 14:01:08 GMT -4
This article does a great job of illuminating the progression of Mrs. Taylor's illness from its very beginnings. Giving the reading a very candid and heartbreaking view of how the disease is first noticed by Mrs. Taylor and how her loved ones and family are reacted to it, as well as feelings of fear related to loss of short-term and long-term memory.
Movie recommendation for movie dealing with Alzheimer's Disease: -Still Alice - The Notebook - Rise of the Planet of the Apes
|
|