Alzheimer’s patients like my mom are segregated into special memory care wards of nursing homes. Is it really a good idea to keep people with this problem together?
Memory Care for Alzheimer’s is Kind of Soviet
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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For what it’s worth, I want to express my sympathy for your and your mother’s plight.
Like many other people my age (a baby-boomer a little older than you) I have a mother who went through a similar ordeal a few years ago. My family and I (and the underpaid, understaffed nursing home personnel) did our best to keep her comfortable — and sometimes happy — until the end. “The World’s Greatest Medical System” indeed.
I wish you and your mother all the best.
Tony Gerace
Yours and Ted’s are not isolated stories.
From my experience these experiences are not the exception, but the rule.
Ted deserves great credit for validating the personal reality that finds itself denied in the promotion of “The World’s Greatest Medical System” as the perfectly operating machine that must not be tampered with.
I’m not suicidal, nor in bad health, but looking a decade or two into the future, a short merciful death is more preferable to me than the prolonged hell of having to endure a futureless future.