Just took a friend [call her Zoe] to the doctor yesterday and ran into a situation I hadn't run into before [actually I almost ran into something like it some 50 years ago, but it was the dental assistant speaking and not the doctor]. My friend Zoe has Alzheimer's/Dementia and she (the doctor) thought Zoe should be sent to a "Memory Care Unit" where she could receive supervision 24 hours a day. My wife and I believe that she does not need to go to a 24 hours supervised care unit at this time. As a short amount of background, my wife and I have gone through the care of my wife's father who had Alzheimer's/Dementia and we finally had to have him go to the excellent facility at Grace Presbyterian Village where he spent the last years of his life. So we are not totally unknowledgeable about what can happen with a person with dementia. We have also provided care for another family member with dementia. The doctor however, indicated that our knowledge and experience meant nothing and that we should follow her instructions without any input on what we felt was the proper course to follow.

My friend is now on a medication prescribed by this doctor and it appears to be helping the total situation. Well, I should say was prescribed. Because, you see, when I made it clear that we were not going to take Zoe from her home across the driveway from us and put her in a 24 hour supervised care unit, the doctor refused to treat or prescribe anything for Zoe. I don't know about you, but I think this falls in the category of "Well I recommend you cut off you healthy leg but since you won't, the medication which is keeping you living will no longer be available through me". Of course, that would be at one extreme end of the category and the doctors refusal to continue to prescribe the medication making Zoe's life a little better is at the other extreme, but nevertheless it fits in the same category.

Well, if you got this far, thanks for 'listening' to my rant. And, if you want to know the name of this neurologist with a specialization in dementia in the Dallas, TX area, leave your email in a comment with a statement that you would like the name.

Oh, and finally, to keep this book related, you might check out some of the books by Thomas Szasz [Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the State University of New York] including The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement which has an avowed purpose to show "that the belief in mental illness and the social actions to which it leads have the same moral implications and political consequences as had the belief in witchcraft and the social actions to which it led."

>> 'til next time - DW <<