Dear Judy,
My girlfriend and I couldn’t believe your callous response to the person who wrote in complaining about all the “do-gooders,” as she called them, who were trying to help her mother with Alzheimer’s.
You know — or should know — how heartbreaking that illness is, how it takes over the life not only of the person afflicted, but also the lives of their relatives and friends.
I know because my uncle had Alzheimer’s and my mother lost years of her own life — literally — caring for him when no one else would. If she’d had friends or relatives to spell her, give advice, help with shopping and bathing and feeding my uncle, she might have lived longer than she did.
So just stop trashing the do-gooders. Stop calling them “Alzheimer’s Amazons.” That’s insulting and unhelpful.
And by the way: my family could have done with a few of those Alzheimer’s Amazons in our time. In fact I would have been eternally grateful.
Lou in Ottawa
Dear Lou,
As you know, the original letter-writer was really at wits’ end: acquaintances, friends, and distanct relatives were offering, unasked, lots of so-called “cures” for Alzheimer’s.
As of now, there are none. There are medications, such as Aricept, which may help an Alzheimer’s patient by improving memory, but their utility and efficacity usually only lasts a year, at the outside, after which the Alzheimer’s patient returns to her previous state of dementia and forgetfulness. So basically nothing works in the long haul, and the writer was understandably getting weary of unsolicited miracle cures.
I think you’re right that true help: in the form of physical help, such as bathing or feeding a patient is a godsend for the traditional care-provider. But witches’ potions don’t improve the life of the patient or the caregiver. They only make small minds feel more imporant.
Thank you for writing
Judy
There are no magic formulas. It’s always that way. Help too much and you’re a meddler, help too little and you are callous. People are in distress, that’s the problem. It’s impossible to know the exact balance between being thoughtful and useful and overdoing your usefulness in a way grieving friends find offensive or intrustive. My rule of thumb is to try and put myself in the shoes of the other person, or as some would say, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That’s all you can do.
i wish you’d stop putting down anything which does not enrich the greedy grabby drug companies. Even some conventional doctors now accept the notion that certain alternative treatments may be helpful. So labeling everything that doesn’t necessarily come with a prescription a ‘witches’ brew’ is condescending. It alsoo displays your ignorance. Read a little about Chinese and Indian medicine before babbling — or at least before sneering over how more than half of humanity practices the healing arts.
Oh please!! I think Judy is absolutely right. Advice is cheap, help is harder. if people are coping with a medical problem (or any other, for that matter) it’s safe to assume that they have done their homework and made their choices. Kibbitzing on the sidelines is not what they need. Ask what YOU can do, and then do it. Quit aggravating people under a ton of pressure by telling them how they should be doing things better. They probably already feel small and helpless and inadequate to deal with the pain and the burdens they’re carrying. Don’t make them feel worse by telling them, in effect, that they’ve made bad choices. That you are so much smarter.
Couldn’t agree more. with Naomi and Eileen “As if” the person dealing with the problem doesn’t have enough on their plate, then they have to deal with unsolicited advice, which is usually worth what they pay for. Often these people are doing it more for their own benefit than the recipient.
Isaac