[PDF] Death In Slow Motion My Mothers Descen eBook

Author : Eleanor Cooney
Publisher : Harper Collins
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 16,32 MB
Release : 2013-02-26
Category : Health & Fitness
ISBN : 0062275976

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A raw, unsentimental and passionately written memoir about trying to care for a parent with Alzheimer’s When her once-glamorous and witty novelist-mother got Alzheimer's, Eleanor Cooney moved her from her beloved Connecticut home to California in order to care for her. In tense, searing prose, punctuated with the blackest of humor, Cooney documents the slow erosion of her mother's mind, the powerful bond the two shared, and her own descent into drink and despair. But the coping mechanism that finally serves this eloquent writer best is writing, the ability to bring to vivid life the memories her mother is losing. As her mother gropes in the gathering darkness for a grip on the world she once loved, succeeding only in conjuring sad fantasies of places and times with her late husband, Cooney revisits their true past. Death in Slow Motion becomes the mesmerizing story of Eleanor's actual childhood, straight out of the pages of John Cheever; the daring and vibrant mother she remembers; and a time that no longer exists for either of them.

Author : Emily K. Abel
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 181 pages
File Size : 28,77 MB
Release : 2017-02-28
Category : Family & Relationships
ISBN : 1421421844

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Challenging assumptions about caregiving for those dying of chronic illness. What is it like to live with—and love—someone whose death, while delayed, is nevertheless foretold? In Living in Death’s Shadow, Emily K. Abel, an expert on the history of death and dying, examines memoirs written between 1965 and 2014 by family members of people who died from chronic disease. In earlier eras, death generally occurred quickly from acute illnesses, but as chronic disease became the major cause of mortality, many people continued to live with terminal diagnoses for months and even years. Illuminating the excruciatingly painful experience of coping with a family member’s extended fatal illness, Abel analyzes the political, personal, cultural, and medical dimensions of these struggles. The book focuses on three significant developments that transformed the experiences of those dying and their intimates: the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, the growing use of high-tech treatments at the end of life, and the rise of a movement to humanize the care of dying people. It questions the exalted value placed on acceptance of mortality as well as the notion that it is always better to die at home than in an institution. Ultimately, Living in Death’s Shadow emphasizes the need to shift attention from the drama of death to the entire course of a serious chronic disease. The chapters follow a common narrative of life-threatening disease: learning the diagnosis; deciding whether to enroll in a clinical trial; acknowledging or struggling against the limits of medicine; receiving care at home and in a hospital or nursing home; and obtaining palliative and hospice care. Living in Death’s Shadow is essential reading for everyone seeking to understand what it means to live with someone suffering from a chronic, fatal condition, including cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, and heart disease.

Author : Eleanor Cooney
Publisher : Harper
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 34,72 MB
Release : 2003-01-21
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780066213965

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Azheimer's is death in slow motion," says Eleanor Cooney in this jarring and unsentimental memoir about caring for her mother, "and it has the ability to kill love while the person you love still breathes." When it was all but certain that her once-glamorous and witty novelist-mother had Alzheimer's, Cooney moved her from her beloved Connecticut home to California in order to care for her. In tense, searing prose, punctuated with the blackest of humor, Cooney documents the slow erosion of her mother's mind, of the powerful bond the two shared, and her own descent into drink and despair. "She was always my favorite person," says Eleanor, "hip, cool, brilliant, funny, sane -- my ultimate confidante and sympathizer." Now, overwhelmed by the Chinese water torture of endless small worries, endlessly repeated, that dementia thrusts on victim and caregiver, Cooney resorts to booze, tranquilizers, and gallows wit to blunt the edges of the relentless loss and the demands of ministering to this devastating disease. But the coping mechanism that finally serves this eloquent writer best is writing, the ability to bring to vivid life the memories her mother is losing. As her mother gropes in the gathering darkness for a grip on the world she once loved, succeeding only in conjuring sad fantasies of places and times with her dead husband, Cooney revisits their true past. Death in Slow Motion becomes the mesmerizing story of Eleanor's actual childhood, straight out of the pages of John Cheever; the daring and vibrant mother she remembers; and a time that no longer exists for either of them. Deeply moving, shockingly honest, and framed by wounded love, Cooney's tale reveals in remorseless prose the true nature of the beast called Alzheimer's, and with it, the arcane processes of the writer's craft and of a splendid mind's disintegration. "Alzheimer's," Cooney writes, "you'll never be the same once it's paid you a visit."

Author : Ann Burack-Weiss
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 210 pages
File Size : 26,63 MB
Release : 2006-03-14
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 0231510772

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Ann Burack-Weiss explores a rich variety of published memoirs by authors who cared for ill or disabled family members. Contrary to the common belief that caregiving is nothing more than a stressful situation to be endured, memoirs describe a life transforming experience-self-discovery, a reordering of one's priorities, and a changed view of the world. The Caregiver's Tale offers insight and comfort to individuals caring for a loved one and is a valuable resource for all health care professionals. Identifying common themes, Burack-Weiss describes how the illness career and social meaning of cancer, dementia, HIV/AIDS, mental illness, and chemical dependence affect the caregiving experience. She applies the same method to an examination of family roles: parents caring for ailing children, couples and siblings caring for one another, and adult children caring for aging parents. Jamaica Kincaid, Sue Miller, Paul Monette, Kenzaburo Oë, and Philip Roth are among the many authors who share their caregiving stories. Burack-Weiss provides an annotated bibliography of the more than one hundred memoirs and an accompanying chart to help readers locate those of greatest interest to them.

Author : Marjorie N. Allen
Publisher : Demos Medical Publishing
Page : 157 pages
File Size : 27,82 MB
Release : 2012-09-18
Category : Health & Fitness
ISBN : 1617051470

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A Look Inside Alzheimer's is a captivating read for friends, families and loved ones affected by this mind-robbing disease. Individuals with early-stage Alzheimer's disease will take comfort in the voice of a fellow traveler experiencing similar challenges, frustrations, and triumphs. Family and professional caregivers will be enlightened by this book and gain a better understanding of this unfathomable world and how best to care for someone living in it. Susan and PJ, share their accounts of their own transformation and deterioration with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease and Marjorie shares her perspective as the wife of a person living with Alzheimer's Disease. The book addresses the complexity and emotions surrounding issues such as the loss of independence, unwanted personality shifts, struggle to communicate, and more. The three life-stories intertwined along with boxed quotes from professionals in the field make this book special.

Author : Barbara A. Schell
Publisher : Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Page : 1298 pages
File Size : 14,98 MB
Release : 2013-03-08
Category : Medical
ISBN : 1451110804

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Willard and Spackman’s Occupational Therapy, Twelfth Edition, continues in the tradition of excellent coverage of critical concepts and practices that have long made this text the leading resource for Occupational Therapy students. Students using this text will learn how to apply client-centered, occupational, evidence based approach across the full spectrum of practice settings. Peppered with first-person narratives, which offer a unique perspective on the lives of those living with disease, this new edition has been fully updated with a visually enticing full color design, and even more photos and illustrations. Vital pedagogical features, including case studies, Practice Dilemmas, and Provocative questions, help position students in the real-world of occupational therapy practice to help prepare them to react appropriately.

Author : Cherríe Moraga
Publisher : Macmillan + ORM
Page : 205 pages
File Size : 38,70 MB
Release : 2019-04-02
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0374718547

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"This memoir's beauty is in its fierce intimacy." --Roy Hoffman, The New York Times Book Review One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2019 From the celebrated editor of This Bridge Called My Back, Cherríe Moraga charts her own coming-of-age alongside her mother’s decline, and also tells the larger story of the Mexican American diaspora. Native Country of the Heart: AMemoir is, at its core, a mother-daughter story. The mother, Elvira, was hired out as a child, along with her siblings, by their own father to pick cotton in California’s Imperial Valley. The daughter, Cherríe Moraga, is a brilliant, pioneering, queer Latina feminist. The story of these two women, and of their people, is woven together in an intimate memoir of critical reflection and deep personal revelation. As a young woman, Elvira left California to work as a cigarette girl in glamorous late-1920s Tijuana, where an ambiguous relationship with a wealthy white man taught her life lessons about power, sex, and opportunity. As Moraga charts her mother’s journey—from impressionable young girl to battle-tested matriarch to, later on, an old woman suffering under the yoke of Alzheimer’s—she traces her own self-discovery of her gender-queer body and Lesbian identity, as well as her passion for activism and the history of her pueblo. As her mother’s memory fails, Moraga is driven to unearth forgotten remnants of a U.S. Mexican diaspora, its indigenous origins, and an American story of cultural loss. Poetically wrought and filled with insight into intergenerational trauma, Native Country of the Heart is a reckoning with white American history and a piercing love letter from a fearless daughter to the mother she will never lose.

Author : Jo Alyson Parker
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 339 pages
File Size : 27,48 MB
Release : 2006-09-01
Category : Science
ISBN : 904741117X

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Time and Memory comprises essays that deal with the nature of memory as a medium that reflects the passage of time, as a tool for the manipulation of time, and as a reflection of the creative and destructive impulse.

Author : Eva Feder Kittay
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 440 pages
File Size : 46,13 MB
Release : 2010-05-18
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781444322798

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Through a series of essays contributed by clinicians, medicalhistorians, and prominent moral philosophers, CognitiveDisability and Its Challenge to Moral Philosophy addresses theethical, bio-ethical, epistemological, historical, andmeta-philosophical questions raised by cognitive disability Features essays by a prominent clinicians and medicalhistorians of cognitive disability, and prominent contemporaryphilosophers such as Ian Hacking, Martha Nussbaum, and PeterSinger Represents the first collection that brings togetherphilosophical discussions of Alzheimer's disease,intellectual/developmental disabilities, and autism under therubric of cognitive disability Offers insights into categories like Alzheimer's, mentalretardation, and autism, as well as issues such as care,personhood, justice, agency, and responsibility