Alzheimer's for Dummies

Rating:
Summary: Beyond the front cover...
Review: ...lies a pleathora of easily accessible and directly useful information for the AD caregiver. What is not contained on the pages is supplied by weblinks and addresses for helpful groups and associations. The best advice often comes from those who have walked the walk and the author here is no exception. Kudos to the author for her bravery and much gratefulness for the gift to us all from the author and her mother.

Rating:
Summary: A good addition to a collection of Alzheimer's books
Review: Alzheimer's for Dummies does a good job in presenting the information relating to care giving and decision making for families of Alzheimer's patients.

During my mother's bout with Alzheimer's, I looked for resources that would give me clear understanding and answers of what was happening now and what was going to happen down the road. This book is one of several that I have on the subject. It does not make light of the disease or the issues being faced, but does present good information in a way that is understandable and clear.

Rating:
Summary: Good information
Review: As an adult child of an Alzheimer's patient searching for as much information as I can about Alzheimer's disease, I find most books to have very little of the humor I desperately need to find to help me cope as the disease progresses. As a person who is living through the progressive loss of a loved one to this disease, I don't find this book to be insensitive or belittling, but refreshing and honest. I have shared this book with other family members and we have all found it helpful.

Rating:
Summary: Don't judge a book by its cover...
Review: I am the author of this book. I lost my beloved mother and my aunt and another relative to Alzheimer's, so in addition to being an experienced medical writer, I have had heart-wrenching personal experience with this devastating disease.

I argued about the title when I was asked to write this book, but eventually the folks at Wiley convinced me that since the Dummies brand is so ubiquitous that people would understand and not take offense. And yet you have taken offense without reading a single word of the book, or knowing anything about the year of research and interviewing I put in to make the book the very best it could be and the easiest to understand.

During the writing of this book, I also had to confront all my own buried sorrows and heartbreak about my mother's illness and death, so the entire process was fairly torturous. Yet, I persevered because I believed in the book and hoped it could serve to spread the message about the importance of early intervention and appropriate use of medication for people with AD.

The Alzheimer's Association is absolutely wonderful and they do an incredible job; we are blessed with a terrific branch staffed with warm and caring people here in Houston. But not every city or town in America is fortunate enough to have a branch nearby; I wrote this book to help people who don't have ready access to support services and who are struggling with medical, legal and finacial issues as well as the emotional problems and family strain that caring for an Alzheimer's patient can bring.

If you had read the book and then said you didn't like it would be one thing. But to judge a book by its cover not only brings the old cliche roaring to vibrant new life but also denigrates the love, care, research and hard work that all three authors put into this book.

Patricia B. Smith