Week of April 13 - April 19, 2008

It is always startling to me when someone I know, even if only through some make-believe roles in make-believe movies, dies and has been prior to her/his death living with a diagnosis of Dementia - probably of this or that type.

Someone found the press release Mr. Heston read announcing his diagnosis - and I just read it. Reading Charleton Heston's announcement that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease reconfirms for me that many, too many individuals, even those diagnosed with the disease see the diagnosis as the start of a long good bye.

We announce and prepare ourselves and others for the fact that we have already started to fade away. It started the moment someone in a white coat told us "You have Dementia, probably of this or that type, and certainly with these features." I'm on my way out! It's all downhill from here! Don't look for me anymore; I'm going to be busy fading away and not being me.

We are seldom seen by others post-diagnosis. We seldom speak up or speak out post-diagnosis. After all, we are fading away. What could we have worthwhile to say? Could we possible grow as a human being after we have been diagnosed? We become someone we would be embarrassed to be, were we capable of appreciating who we had become!

Are we? Will be embarrassed for ourselves? Who is embarrassed for whom? How do you know I'm not accepting, perhaps even content with who I am today? Even if I'm sometimes frustrated. Even if I'm sometimes agitated. I'm still me!

Isn't it time others who don't live with the diagnosis focus their energies on understanding, appreciating, supporting, enabling those of us who do live with diagnosis? Don't concentrate on who we were. Don't try to convince us we should hang on to yesterday, or last year, or fifty years ago – when we are struggling to understand today!

Wouldn't it be easier to love someone we believed was a whole person, instead of someone half empty? Instead of someone who is literally a shell of who they were?

Is it any wonder people find us hard to love when they find us so hard to understand? To appreciate us for who we are? To accept our changes, our symptoms, our forgetting and confusion? Of course it is. Some people with dementia and many caregivers keep saying good-bye. I, and I honestly believe every other person living with and in dementia need to hear, feel, and be supported by saying "Hello!"

This is not an issue just for those in the late stage of the disease, nor just for those in the middle stage of the disease. It starts the day the diagnosis is pronounced. Collectively, and individually we need to find the courage, the support, the understanding to say "hello" to ourselves and each other.

Every day! Every day! It's that simple! It's that easy! Reduce stress, increase love you give and receive, enjoy and live in today.

"Hello,"

Richard

BY:

Richard Taylor, Ph.D.

Richard Taylor has lived for five years with a diagnosis of dementia probably of the Alzheimer's type. A former psychologist, he is now a champion for individuals with early-stage and early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

COPYRIGHT:

Copyright © 2008. Richard Taylor, Ph.D.
All rights reserved.