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The deep fragrance of soy and garlic wafted out to the nurses' station from Mrs. Lee's room, signaling that her daughter, Mrs. Wong, had arrived with lunch. Time for me to make rounds. Mrs. Wong was her mother's interpreter and advocate, as well as her cook. When I walked in, Mrs. Wong was untying the handles of white plastic bags bearing red Chinese lettering. Inside were rectangular plastic cont...

Alzheimer's disease steals a person's privacy as surely as it steals memory. At a certain stage, your loved one may recall a time when she could bathe herself, but that time has passed. As a caregiver, it's your job to keep her clean while maintaining her comfort and dignity. The job description will change constantly with the disease. At first, the person in your care may feel embarrassed about ...

For 20 years, Robyn Yale has been on a mission to raise awareness that people with early-stage Alzheimer's disease can still lead rich, active lives. A licensed clinical social worker who practices in the San Francisco Bay Area, Yale says that the early stage of the disease is different from what happens in middle and later stages. People in the early stages are healthy, high functioning, and in m...

Most caregivers will do practically anything for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease. They'll give baths, help to dress the person, cut up food into manageable bites, and patiently answer the same question 20 times in a row. But when a patient starts wetting or soiling himself, even the most dedicated caregivers can feel defeated. It's hard to face the prospect of constantly cleaning urine stain...

You may feel unsettled when your mother botches her favorite recipe. Then again, who hasn't confused tablespoons with teaspoons a few times? But as the months go on, she starts forgetting to turn off burners. She puts salt in her coffee rather than sugar. And one day, she no longer remembers to eat. When Alzheimer's disease begins taking over the brain, even the most basic instincts aren't safe. ...

People with Alzheimer's disease often act as if their minds are caught in an endless tape loop. They may ask the same question 20 times in an afternoon, pace a stretch of floor for hours, or hum a tune that never seems to run out of verses. Many have a condition called echolalia, in which the patient repeats words endlessly or echoes a phrase. If you're caring for someone with the disease, this so...

Before your loved one developed Alzheimer's disease, the two of you used to talk about anything and everything. But what do you say now that he can't remember your name? The right words can be hard to find, but they're more important than ever. Simple, reassuring messages can give your loved one comfort and guidance -- the two things Alzheimer's patients most desperately need. Staying positive ...

With all of the difficulties facing people with Alzheimer's disease -- not to mention their caregivers -- oral hygiene may seem like a trivial issue. Getting a person clean and dressed is hard enough. Who has time to worry about a few cavities or slipping dentures? As it turns out, you do. Investing that time can be one of the most important things you do for your loved one. Dental hygiene cruci...

It was during the busy Christmas season when I turned my car into the parking lot of the funeral home. This patient was my third to die in the past few weeks, and tonight was my second wake in three days. It was not easy to make the stop that evening. The holiday season is a difficult time for me to practice medicine; patients are more lonely and depressed, families are under greater stress, and ...

Your father puts on his pants one leg at a time, just as he has done since childhood. But today, there's something different. Your father has Alzheimer's disease, and this morning, unlike every other morning for the last 70 years, he's pulling on his pants on top of his pajamas. For Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers, the seemingly simple act of getting dressed can turn into a minefield of...

Susan Spiker could never have imagined that at age 27, with a busy married life and two young sons, she would simultaneously become a caregiver to her mother. But six years ago, at age 61, Betty Spiker was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD). "For quite a while after my mother's diagnosis, I think I was in denial," says Spiker, now 33, of Atlanta, Georgia. "For a year or so, I really believed...

In a memoir about caring for her husband, who had Alzheimer's disease, Lela Knox Shanks recalls that he once shouted at her, "Get out of here! You're an impostor trying to break up my marriage!" Afraid for her safety, she ran out the back door, sat in the sun, and cried, trying to figure out what to do. After 30 minutes or so, she tapped hesitantly at the back door. Her husband opened it, and excl...

Sometimes it seems people with Alzheimer's disease have lost all concept of boredom. How else could they stand to spend a day staring at the same wall or shuffling up and down the same hallway? The truth is, Alzheimer's patients may feel boredom as deeply as anyone else. And when they can no longer plan their own activities, the boredom can turn to frustration. A person may start wandering the ho...

Alzheimer's disease is like a cat burglar. It slips into a person's life without making a sound, and soon treasured possessions start disappearing: memory, personality, independence. For many years, even the top medical detectives in the country were baffled by such robbery. Doctors knew that the brains of people with Alzheimer's were filled with tangled strings of protein and sticky clumps of pl...

Most of us are choosy when it comes to mattresses, sheets, and pillows, and for good reason: We tend to spend more time in bed than any other single place. For people who are chronically ill or disabled, a quality bed isn't just a luxury item -- it's a necessity. The right bed can bring much-needed comfort. Most important, for people who are bedridden, or who sit or lie in the same position for ho...

Although my father had battled a rare but non-metastasizing form of cancer for 25 years, my mother had never been sick a day in her life. The alarming news of her illness, that it was not arthritis but in fact Lou Gehrig's disease with an accompanying Alzheimer's-type dementia, came from out of a cruel nowhere one September day in 1991. It came at the same time that my father was beginning to real...

Louis Benton, Jr. has nine brothers and sisters. But when his mother had a breast cancer recurrence and his father was diagnosed with bone cancer a few months later, Benton was the one who came to his parents' aid. "I had retired three years ago, so it fell into my hands," says Benton. "I can't describe what it's like to have both parents sick at the same time." Cancer is in large part a disease...

For someone with limited mobility, the journey from the bed to the bathroom can seem like a cross-country trek. And even if she can reach the destination, she may not be able to sit down on the toilet. In this situation, many caregivers have turned to an unappealing but convenient option: The bedpan. Bedpans are a good choice only if your relative can tell you when she needs it, and if someone i...

It was the call that every adult child dreads: My mother had become terminally ill with Lou Gehrig's disease, and my father was dying of cancer. Both of my parents were dying, and I lived 1,200 miles away with a career and family of my own. In my youth, when my parents were healthy, I had longed to leave their nest; now that they were ill, the distance between us weighed heavily. When I went home...

If you're caring for a chronically ill or disabled friend or relative, you've joined one of the biggest -- and most important -- workforces in the country. According to the Family Caregiver Alliance (FCA), an estimated 44 million Americans have taken on this vital job. They fix meals, make doctor's appointments, do the laundry, and generally make sure their frail or sick relatives or friends can l...

Michelle Booth of Foster City, California, moved in with her parents 10 years ago, her three-year-old daughter in tow. Her parents were both in their late 70s, but they had the strength and the good health to be helpful, doting grandparents. That was before her father -- now 88 -- suffered several strokes and before her mother -- now 87 -- developed Alzheimer's disease. Booth still lives with he...

For a full year following my parents' deaths -- five weeks apart, in a nursing home 1,200 miles away -- I fell prey to clinical depression. Although I did everything I could to give them the best possible care, I never budgeted time for myself. I didn't realize that by ignoring my physical and mental health during two years of intensive caregiving, I was setting myself up for a breakdown that woul...

It was more than a decade ago when Shawna Lee stepped into the sun room of her parents' house in Champaign, Illinois, and found her 60-year-old mother, Hsiu Lee, looking disoriented. "She told me, 'Your grandfather treated me badly his whole life.' Then she started crying and told me she couldn't button her blouse." "I thought this was weird and called the doctor, who said to come in right away," ...

Stroke survivors often feel as though they're lost in an alien landscape. Words can lose their meaning, familiar places and objects can become bewildering, and even the simplest tasks can seem overwhelming. Sufferers may someday return to their old world, but they can't make the trip on their own. For these reasons, stroke survivors need a concerned caregiver who can help ease the way to recovery....

September 14, 2001 It's always been one of my signature traits that I don't know how to cook. "Melanie's hopeless in the kitchen," my sisters would shrug, as if it were something inborn, like being tall or clumsy. "I get flustered when the recipe tells you to do more than one thing at once," I'd say helplessly, remembering my few disastrous attempts at throwing dinner parties. It's not that I can...

What is elderlaw? Your lifestyle, ambitions, and worries all change with age -- and so can your legal needs. Senior citizens who have never hired an attorney in their lives may suddenly find themselves thumbing through the phone book when it's time to plan their estates, fight for Medicare benefits, arrange for long-term health care, or write a will. Fortunately, a growing number of attorneys acro...

A better understanding of pain -- and how to treat it -- means a gentler death for many patients with terminal illnesses. People who are near death have more important things to do than suffer. The final days, weeks, and months should be a time to connect with loved ones and reflect on life, says Kandyce Powell, RN. As the executive director of the Maine Hospice Council, Powell has stood at the si...

Mother Teresa reportedly once said that no one should die away from the sight of a loving face, and today's hospices strive to fulfill that wish. Hospice is care for people who are dying and is usually administered at their homes. Such an approach is more attuned to the physical, spiritual, and emotional needs of patients and their families, advocates say. The primary goal of hospice is to comfort...

Latex is one more example of a natural product with certain useful properties that are superior to anything manmade. This liquid, found in tropical rubber trees, is perfect for making products that need to be constructed out of a material that's strong, stretchy, thin and lightweight. That's why you can find it in products as diverse as pacifiers, balloons, disposable gloves, and condoms. Just a...

Like Scarlett O'Hara who put off thinking about anything unpleasant until tomorrow, most Americans aren't planning for how they'll pay for a nursing home or at-home care should they need it when they're old, disabled or chronically sick. Yet for the estimated 2-in-5 among us who will need extended care at some time in our lives, there's a tool that can keep us from racing through our life savings...

Clark and Altave Vandenberg enjoyed living by themselves in their El Sobrante, California, home. Even though their eyesight and health were failing, they adamantly opposed moving to a nursing home. But when Altave fell and broke her hip, her injury shattered the fragile accommodations the couple had made to continue living independently. Clark's ill health left him unable to care for his ailing w...

Beth Johnson's decision to move her mother, Frieda, into her own apartment was agonizing. Frieda had suffered a series of small strokes, and Johnson worried that her mother was too frail to live alone. But after moving into Johnson's Southfield, Michigan, home, Frieda's health problems multiplied. She suffered a series of falls, often calling for her daughter in the middle of the night. Then Frie...

Millions of people care for friends and relatives with no help or compensation, and the hardest working are also the oldest and most vulnerable. At age 86, Alice Wilson of Billings, Montana, is a full-time healthcare worker. In her case, full-time means 24 hours a day. Alice's 81-year-old husband, Gunther, has a congenital condition that allows water to collect in his brain. The condition makes h...

In the end, Superman was brought down by bedsores. Christopher Reeve, the actor who played the superhero in four movies, died in 2004 of complications from infected bedsores that led to sepsis and heart failure, 10 years after a horse-riding accident left him paralyzed from the neck down. (He also had an allergic shock reaction to the drug used to treat the systemic infection from the sores, whic...

Poor Meg Ryan. She's ministering to her ailing father's every need while running a family and a business. Her older sister, a celebrity, is far too busy to help out, although she manages to lecture Meg by cell phone from her empire at a vapid women's magazine. The youngest sister also watches from the sidelines: She's obsessed with perfecting the soap opera character she plays on TV. Naturally the...

Part I Several summers ago, I was working on my house's teetering foundation when the phone rang. It was about my brother Miguel. He was on a helicopter, being airlifted to a trauma center. He had been returning home from a research trip when his colleague, who was driving, lost control. The car rolled over, snapping my brother's neck. His condition was anything but stable. Even now, it's hard to...

Ethelinn Block thought her father's strange behavior was just signs of grief over the loss of his wife, and that he would return to normal in time. But after three years, Arthur's decline became alarming. He forgot to pay bills and keep appointments; he misplaced things. His business faltered to the point that his children had to close it down. As loss piled upon loss, eventually the family had to...

When her 69-year-old husband died of Alzheimer's disease, Dorothy Wellborn was surrounded by loving friends and family. She wept with them at the memorial service. She watched as the coffin closed on her husband's frail body, then went home with her children. But a few weeks later, when they flew back to their respective homes, she woke up to an empty house. The solitude was agonizing, especially...

Within minutes, a stroke can ravage your brain, potentially robbing you of a world of skills that, until now, you've taken entirely for granted. Among the precious things you may lose is the ability to walk -- at least at the beginning. "It was frustrating and scary. I couldn't stand or move," recalls Melanie Goldberg*, who suffered her stroke in 1998 at the age of 52. "Basically you want to be in...

For many people who have had a stroke, simply walking again can be extremely daunting. And if there are steps to climb or narrow doorways to pass through, it may seem downright impossible. Barriers to safe walking pop up in places that people wouldn't have considered dangerous terrain before having a stroke. Outdoors, inclines in the sidewalk can change from block to block -- and that's one of the...

Have you ever asked for a "thingamajig" when you really meant a screwdriver? Have you ever misread a word on a street sign as you drove past? Of course. Everybody has language glitches every now and then. Now try to imagine a world where everything is a thingamajig and every sign, book, or menu is gibberish. For many people recovering from a stroke, this world is a reality. Every year, 80,000 stro...

When someone has had a stroke, the damage to speech and movement is usually obvious. But for some stroke survivors, having trouble swallowing can be an invisible -- but extremely disabling -- aftereffect. Although there is no hard data on the number of people who have difficulty swallowing after a stroke, the American Stroke Association says the problem may occur in up to 65 percent of stroke pati...

To many people, the word "cancer" represents their worst nightmare. For Ken Lloyd, a 65-year-old former firefighter, the nightmare began with his father, who had prostate cancer, and a sister who had breast cancer. Lloyd knew his risk of getting cancer was elevated, because his job as a firefighter in Napa, California, had often exposed him to toxic materials. "Cancer rates in firefighters are fai...

If you think you might have HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), the virus that causes AIDS, you need to find out for sure. Fortunately, there's a quick, reliable, and completely confidential way to know whether or not you carry the virus. You don't have to schedule a doctor's appointment or get a referral from a clinic. You don't even have to leave your house. You can buy a Home Access HIV-1 Test...

1. Alzheimer's disease is the same as dementia and is a natural part of the aging process. True False 2. How many people in the United States are thought to suffer from Alzheimer's disease? a. Around a million b. Around 5 million c. Around 25 million d. Around 40 million 3. Which of the following is the most important risk factor for developing late-onset Alzheimer's disease? ...

When a loved one has Alzheimer's disease, time takes on new significance. Every day that he or she can hold onto old memories or stay out of a nursing home becomes a gift. Thanks to new treatments and a growing understanding of the disease, families and patients can enjoy more of those gifts than ever before. For some patients, new drugs can delay the advance of the disease for months, or even yea...

There's still no cure for Alzheimer's or known way to prevent it. But if you're worried about developing the disease, your doctor just might give you an unexpected prescription. She might urge you to exercise daily, eat a diet rich in whole foods, and watch your weight. She might even recommend taking a language class or some dance lessons. Or having a fish dinner twice a week. Or adding curry dis...

Building a ramp will get any wheelchair to a doorway that is normally approached by steps. But even the best-made ramp won't do you much good if you can't get the chair into the house. After my brother Miguel's car accident, which left him paralyzed from the neck down, we worried that his doors wouldn't be big enough to accommodate his power wheelchair. But we were lucky: Miguel's chair fit th...

A few years after a car accident that left my brother Miguel paralyzed from the shoulders down, he had to be flown to a state-of-the-art facility in California in a last-ditch effort to treat an infection that was causing his lungs to collapse. Soon after arriving he was strapped onto a device called a Rotobed. This expensive piece of medical equipment, complete with all the bells and whistles, is...

My brother Miguel celebrated his birthday in Santa Cruz, Calif., soon after he left his job as a tenured sociology professor in Albuquerque. By the time I arrived to help with the party preparations, our mother was busy in the kitchen rolling out dough for the empanadas (Argentine-style turnovers filled with savory delights). After his morning care routine, Miguel wheeled into the kitchen to join ...

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