The introduction to the Alzheimer's Study Guide was written by Dr. Christopher M. Leighton, Executive Director of ICJS. In it he talks of the rapidly growing numbers of elderly in our society and the challenges that arise in caring for them.
“All of us share a common destiny: All of us are woven out of fragile material that sooner or later breaks down. Our living and dying are intertwined so inextricably and so insolubly that our approach to one profoundly influences our experience of the other.”
“While studying at the Princeton Theological Seminary, I worked for a year as a chaplain in a nursing home. The experience was profoundly unsettling. The halls were lined with people strapped into wheelchairs; the televisions were always on, with the volume so loud that it washed out almost all conversation. Total strangers shared rooms, and the curtains separating one bed from the other offered only a hint of privacy. An undercurrent of despair pulled everyone downward. Routinely, nurses wheeled carts loaded with medications up and down the corridors; pills were dispensed almost by the fistful: An effective cocktail of pharmaceuticals could subdue almost any patient in the place.
The nursing home sadly reminded me of lines from William Butler Yeats’s Sailing to Byzantium: ‘An aged man is but a paltry thing/A tattered coat upon a stick …’ Much of the time, I offered reassurance or provided distraction to recent arrivals, people who were too often filled with the panic that comes when trapped in a terrifying nightmare. Again and again, disoriented seniors pleaded with me to help them escape, to help them get back home. They acted as if they had been shipped off to a foreign country, distraught that no friends or family could rescue them from this horrible exile. Their cries of anguish echoed the Psalms of Lament:
I have passed out of mind like one who is dead;
I have become like broken vessel.
For I hear the whispering of many—
terror all around!—
as they scheme together against me,
as they plot to take my life. (31: 12-13, NRSV)
My heart is in anguish within me,
the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fear and trembling come upon me,
and horror overwhelms me.
And I say, ‘O that I had wings like a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest;
truly, I would flee far away;
I would lodge in the wilderness;
I would hurry to find a shelter for myself
from the raging wind and tempest.’” (55:4-8, NRSV)
“Alzheimer’s disease underscores a reality that we often take for granted: A vast continuum of time connects us to events that transpired millennia ago and will unfold far into the future. The Hebrew Bible, for instance, does not hesitate when commanding memory. ‘Its injunctions to remember are unconditional, and even when not commanded, remembrance is always pivotal,’ Israeli historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi has written. ‘Altogether, the word zakhar [Hebrew for “remember”] appears in its various declensions in the Bible no less than one hundred and sixty-nine times, usually with either Israel or God as the subject, for memory is incumbent upon both. The verb is complemented by its obverse—forgetting. As Israel is enjoined to remember, it is adjured not to forget.’ (Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory, Shocken Books, 1989, p. 5.) History and experience reverberate through the Bible, culminating in Deuteronomy and the prophets: ‘Remember the days of old,/Consider the years of ages past’ (Deuteronomy 32:7, NJPS); ‘Remember these things, O Jacob/For you, O Israel, are my servant;/I fashioned you … O Israel, never forget Me’ (Isaiah 44:21, NJPS); and in several places, with a hammering insistence, ‘Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt’ (Deuteronomy 5:15, 15:15, 16:12, 24:18, 24:22, NJPS).
“Alzheimer’s disease may present a particularly poignant challenge for those who are anchored within the Abrahamic traditions; but its social, economic, medical, and political impact on our society places strains on individuals, families, and our health care system that defy calculation:
- About 4.5 million Americans have Alzheimer's disease, double the number in 1980.
- By 2050, as many as 16 million Americans could be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.
- A Gallup Poll determined that one in ten Americans has a family member afflicted with Alzheimer's disease, and one in three knows someone with the disease.
- Half of all nursing home patients have Alzheimer's or other cognitive diseases.
- More than seventy per cent of people with Alzheimer's disease live at home, where family and friends provide almost seventy-five per cent of their care.
- The average lifetime cost of care for an Alzheimer's patient is $174,000.
- Medicaid expenditures for residential dementia care will total $24 billion by 2010.
- In 2005 alone, $647 billion was spent on Alzheimer's disease research.
(Data from the Alzheimer’s Disease Association)”
