Dancing With Rose

I finally finished Dancing With Rose today. It's by no means a hard read, I guess just business and laziness as to why it took me so long. But the timing of reading this book couldn't have been more appropriate. I'm not willing to explain why over my blog...it just seems too private of an issue to write about in this type of public forum.

The book is about a woman, who after losing her mother to Alzheimer's, decides to start working at an Alzheimer's nursing home, in an attempt to understand the disease better.

I found her to be so intriguing. The more she worked at the nursing home, the more she was able to accommodate her patients. She didn't just go through the motions and do the daily chores this job required of her. She put thought into it. She studied her patients, their mannerisms, and their needs. She spoke with family members to gain a better understanding of who her patients were before Alzheimer's set in. She found ways to communicate with them and connect with them. She would try to figure out what world they were living in at the time and join them. (This known as validation therapy)

What was most intriguing to me, though, was the outlook she had about Alzheimer's when she stopped working at the nursing home. She used to think, like many people, that Alzheimer's was something to fear, and that death is almost a blessing for an Alzheimer's patient. But after working at the facility, her beliefs were beginning to change. She says of the old beliefs, "I find the remarks disquieting. They deny the person's humanity, as if the person ceased to be entitled to life because he or she had a disease."

She also says, "...but part of me has come to think of Alzheimer's, despite its obvious horrors, as a disease of freedom. It's not just memory that one loses. It is inhibition. It is pretense. The thin layer of civility that forces us healthy people to operate with equanimity even when we are tired or crabby or don't like someone or just want to be left alone-that's gone too. What remains is some unvarnished, unprotected self, maybe the self a person would have been had culture and society, gender and class, manners and mores not overlaid it. The buried self, the unlived self....But there's one thing about the folks of Maplewood, about people with Alzheimer's in general: they are real, even the ones like Frances M. and Marianne, who are seriously deluded. They don't have ulterior motives. They don't manipulate. They don't play games. They just are."

She also contemplates the controversial idea that Alzheimer's is a form of Zen enlightenment. She had spoken to a professor who said, "...Alzheimer's is a detaching disease. It detaches people from their memories, their selves. We can look at that as tragic and awful, or we can change the frame....Consider Zen which is all about clearing your mind, detaching from your thoughts, grounding yourself in the moment. Well, that's Alzheimer's."

Although I admire her unconventional thoughts towards the disease, I'm nowhere near the point where I can think in such a way. Truth be told, I see it as a painful and depressing feat, one that scares me than most things. I think one of the saddest days I could ever experience is the day a family member or friend would not remember who I am. I hope I never have to go through that.