Alzheimer's - Hard Questions

Zusatztext Praise for Hilde and James Lindemann Nelson's previous book! The Patient in the Family: An Ethics of Medicine and Families : "This is a pioneering work...The Nelsons write clear! untechnical prose with an uncommonly fine eye for detail! and the case descriptions are superb." --John Hardwig! East Tennessee State University "Their critique of the current dogmas that tend to guide medical decision-making in the care of incompetent patients is very powerful. This is a clearly written! accessible book that will play a prominent role in subsequent discussions of health care ethics." --Susan Sherwin! Dalhousie University Informationen zum Autor James Lindemann Nelson Klappentext Caring for a loved one who is terminally ill can be tremendously stressful under any circumstances. If that person has a degenerative and dementing disease such as Alzheimer's, and is unable to participate in decisions regarding his or her care, the stress is that much greater. When it comes to making those difficult moral and ethical decisions which will preserve the dignity and integrity of the patient while also maintaining the caregiver's own selfhood, this is the book that can help. How much should the patient be told? How strongly should he be urged to plan for his own future? Is it ever right to lie to the patient about her condition? When is it right to place your loved one in a nursing home--and not feel guilty about it? How do different family members arrive at agreement among themselves in each of these situations? Authors and bioethicists James and Hilde Lindemann Nelson have written an invaluable step-by-step guide to tackling these and other difficult decisions. Using their extensive research on moral issues in health care, the Nelsons create hypothetical scenarios that demonstrate some of the most common situations caregivers will have to face during every stage of the illness, and show by example how they can make the right choices for themselves, the patient, and the rest of the family. This invaluable information, combined with a state-by-state and city-by-city guide to agencies and support groups offering practical assistance, as well as a list of suggested reading on the subject, make this book unique--and the most complete source of advice available. Leseprobe An exhausted, middle-aged woman stands in the bedroom doorway as the gray light of early morning outlines her father, asleep under the quilt. Barbara Kessler Johnson is just about drained. As she pulls her robe more tightly about her, she feels that with this gesture she is also holding herself together. Her dad, diagnosed several years ago as having Alzheimer's disease, is starting to stir, and she is dreading the moment when he will awake. It's not the "how-to" problems that are getting her down--how to get him to the bathroom, how to improve his appetite--it's the moral problems. Mr. Kessler begins every morning by sitting up in bed and asking for his wife, who has been dead these twelve years. Barbara has learned the hard way that if she tells him the truth, however gently, however matter-of-factly, her father's grief will be as deep as if the loss were fresh. To him it is fresh, every time. Yet, if she tells a lie--if she says that her mother is out shopping, or visiting, or at work--she may have to fend off his questions all day long, piling further lies on top of the first one. Her father is not so demented that he always accepts what he's told without question; if she lies, he's likely to be suspicious and sometimes flat-out nasty, blaming his daughter for keeping his wife from him. Barbara is profoundly tired of wrestling with this problem, and with all the other problems he causes as well. The refrain that's been running through her head for months starts up again: Dad really should be in a nursing home. But shortly after he was finally diagnosed, he aske...

Product details

• Authors: Nelson, Hilde Lindemann Nelson, James Lindemann Nelson
• Publisher: Main Street Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 13.10.1997
• EAN: 9780385485340
• ISBN: 978-0-385-48534-0
• No. of pages: 224
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 216 mm x 13 mm
• Subjects: Guides > Health; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > General