Tag: dementia

  • Caring for Nursing Home Patients under Medicare

    What drove me crazy about practicing medicine in a nursing home wasn’t the patients, although with their many medical problems often including cognitive impairment they were a challenge; and it wasn’t the families, though with their anxiety and attentiveness and sometimes their guilt they were an even greater challenge. What drove me crazy about nursing…

  • A Living Resume

    On the occasion of my last birthday, a friend asked how it feels to be growing old? I proffered first, the old bromide that in my head I feelabout thirty, but my body groans a wholly different story. Then I joked that when people intone, “Well, you’re only as old as you feel,” I reflexively…

  • Will guilt keep me from doing what is best for my Alzheimer spouse?

    I met Vickie in Your Father’s Mustache, a sing-along place in Greenwich Village 46 years ago.  She had long dark hair and wore a poncho like Clint Eastwood in Fistful of Dollars. She was singing and swaying with such joy. She had the kind of face you could look at the rest of your life. …

  • Dementia and the Goals of Care

    Even though you think and behave perfectly normally, you might already have Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, you might warrant the label of “pre-clinical Alzheimer’s disease” for a full 20 years before graduating to the full-fledged condition. That according to the latest definition of Alzheimer’s put forward by the National Institute on Aging together with Alzheimer’s Association…

  • A Retirement Community’s Private and Public Affairs

    Our move from the Washington area to a retirement community in Baltimore called Roland Park Place came five ago when, I was 81 and my wife, Pat, was 80. It was concerns about our health and a concerted push from our seven children that propelled us to decide to move. It had become more noticeable that Pat might have Alzheimer’s. For me,…

  • Aging with Purpose

    Near the end of my clinical career as a psychiatrist, I, like so many other psychiatrists, was required to do more in less time. In order to use that precious time as best as possible, I wondered if there was anything else I could do to offset that limitation. Soon, I recalled the landmark book…

  • Why I won’t test myself for the Alzheimer’s gene

    A recent survey of 1200 adults found that Alzheimer ’s disease (AD) is the most feared disease among older Americans, with 44% identifying it as their biggest worry. Cancer was second, with 33% fearing it most. Over 65ers will not be surprised by these findings. Given the high level of fear, it’s natural and inevitable…

  • Alzheimer’s Association 2014 Annual Report

    It’s that time of year again, when the Alzheimer’s Association releases its annual report: Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures. The 2014 edition doesn’t tell us much that’s new—which amounts to a good deal of bad news. The facts boil down to these:

  • Old Age and Autobiographical Memory

    Encountering new research on autobiographical memory is always unsettling. Even if you avoid the frightening findings on Alzheimer’s and other pathological conditions, the unreliability and difficulty of aging memory are humbling. All of the errors of recall that beset the young become more pronounced in the old. A well written and authoritative description of the…

  • Retirement and Dementia

    On Monday, July 15, at 4:00 PM at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Boston, Carole Dufouil, director of research in neuroepidemiology at the Institut National de la santé et de la recherché médicale at the Bordeaux School of Public Health in France, presented her research on the relationship between retirement and dementia. In less…