Читать книгу The Alzheimer's Epidemic - Danton O'Day - Страница 17

The frontline workers who deal with Alzheimer’s disease are nurses and other healthcare workers who strive daily to make the patients’ and their families’ lives more bearable and livable. With the loss of the persons’ intellectual awareness, harmful prejudices, real and imagined, rise to the surface. In the worst cases, physical violence can accompany verbal assault. In spite of this, healthcare workers must rise above such routine onslaughts to their person, race or beliefs. This aspect of the disease and the toll it takes on caregivers of all stripes is rarely recognized by family members whose primary focus is on their sibling, father, mother or grandparent. It is also of little concern to the person with the disease who often will be trying desperately to hang on to whatever reality remains in their lives. Through no fault of their own, they have lost the ability to separate appropriate from inappropriate behavior. We forget too that the healthcare worker is bound by laws and legalities that are designed to meet the needs of the many while often ignoring their own safety and mental health. Typically the last ones considered are those who deliver patient care. These are just some of the unquantifiable costs of the disease. So like a stone thrown into a pond, the behavioral effects of Alzheimer’s disease start from the patient, rippling ever outward, disrupting the calm waters of whomever resides in that human pond.