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Alzheimer'sMind meltdownALZHEIMER’S Sharon Fish Mooney, ‘a writer, registered nurse and a teacher’, also became a caregiver when her mother developed Alzheimer’s disease. This book has been written for carers. Written from an American perspective, it has been adapted for UK readers, though British readers will recognise odd words such as ‘exiting’ and situations that do not exist in the UK. The book is divided into four parts. Part one, ‘Something Has Gone Wrong’, looks at Alzheimer’s and the road to diagnosis; part two, ‘Caring for Your Loved One’, is self explanatory, as is part three, ‘Caring for Yourself’. Part four, ‘Saying Goodbye’, is about finding a care home, and dying. Three appendices at the back give more information, including a list of British organisations. So much information is given in this book that at times it feels like reading a nursing manual. Ms. Mooney seems to have tried to mitigate by including anecdotes, patients’ stories and comments, threaded through the narrative like beads on a necklace. It sometimes gives a curiously disjointed effect. Nevertheless, there is a wealth of practical, ‘hands-on’ information, including an index to topics that makes it a very helpful publication for anyone caring for someone with dementia. The pages on making your home safe (117-121) are packed with excellent tips from someone who’s clearly ‘been there’; for example: ‘Remove knobs from your gas cooker or turn off the shut-off valve at night if your loved one wanders and tries to cook’. There is a spiritual element, but it seems to have been added like one of the beads mentioned earlier. Music and subdued lighting can make mealtimes more manageable, for instance, but there’s nothing about the calming effect of saying Grace before meals, or reading Scripture or singing familiar hymns or choruses. When choosing a care home, there’s no mention of the spiritual support that’s so essential to suffering Christians. Perhaps the saddest omission is when a carer asks, ‘Where is the essence of my father?’ (page 181). There’s no acknowledging that, as an eternal being, her father had not lost his essence, his soul. It had been hidden, not destroyed, as the paragraph implies, by the disease. Because there’s no sense of that reflexive reaching for God, the book gives little spiritual encouragement. Louise Morse© Evangelicals Now - December 2008 |