Full Book Reviews
Estella Reed Blevin recommends:
Kessler, Lauren. Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer’s. Viking Penguin, © 2007. 260 p.
Lauren Kessler, a jounalist, took a job as an R. A. (resident assistant) in an Alzheimer facility to experience the lives of the residents.
Starting with the thirty-two pages of forms that an R.A. had to fill out in applying for an entry-level, minimum wage job, the author details her colleagues, their duties, the process of treating sundry patients. Kessler writes, “The events and incidents chronicled in the book happened. All of the conversations recorded in this book took place. I mean to tell truths both factual and emotional.”
Lauren is doing an act of atonement for her own neglect-- and fear-- of her mother when the mother developed Alzheimer’s. Lauren thought she would inherit her mother’s malady. The daughter expected her father to care for the patient in New York and felt guilty until she moved her mother to a facility near her in Oregon. Lauren paid for a geriatric nurse to accompany her mother on the cross-country flight. She kept her one night before placing her in another facility, not Maplewood where the author worked. Lauren was not comfortable visiting her mother who slowly regressed and ultimately was returned to New York. Nine months after Lauren put her mother on the plane back to New York, her father called to say,” Mom is dead. She choked on a piece of toast.”
The facts about the mother are background. The essence of the book is the love extended to the residents of Maplewood. Five R A’s applied for work the same day Lauren applied. Janine, age 24, had a seven-year old son and needed the job. The responsibilities of the RA position were summarized as “Performing care with an awareness of dignity and individuality.” The author writes that she liked the high-minded language (and the thought behind it) but it obscured the unpleasant daily details of toileting, changing diapers, emptying commodes, showering, dressing and undressing, serving food, hand-feeding, doing laundry, vacuuming, dusting, disinfecting, and taking out the garbage. Other duties were getting people to and from scheduled activities, keeping a detailed written log of whatever happened on the shift, dealing with relatives who come to visit, and just being there. Janine and Lauren trained together and understood each other. Their paths crossed from time to time, but they were assigned to different units, called neighborhoods. The average R A burned out in three months.
One of the very interesting residents (never referred to as patients) was seventy-six year old Caroline, a former City Music Hall Rockette. She teamed up with Jack, an alert and talkative, take-charge guy. Caroline seemed to think Jack was her former husband. Jeanette was the woman for whom everyday was the day she’s going to pack to go home.
Marianne created an alternative reality for herself. She thought she was a retired executive at Maplewood for R & R. She obsesses about phone calls and luncheon appointments. She treats Lauren like an unimportant secretary.
Eloise continually repeats, “I’m so stupid,” and wants to go home. Her daughter Barbara is a critical visitor.
Hayes, a dapper ninety-one year old, is constantly asking for help and calls for someone to scratch his back. His condition degenerated to the need for a catheter and urine bag. One of the sad parts of the book reports Hayes’ death.
A tiny little lady, called Grams, cleaned and dusted all day, or folded imaginary laundry. When Billie was given a baby-doll for her arms, she became a different person. She began to socialize and become agreeable.
Rose, a deeply demented resident, invaded other resident’s rooms and liked to curl up to sleep on Hayes’ bed. She was seemingly unreachable. At a party when Lauren was not on duty, but was an invited guest, Rose responded to music. Lauren pulled Rose from her chair and they waltzed, even culminating in Rose leading.
Throughout the book, Kessler alludes to Thomas Kitwood’s Dementia Reconsidered as a valuable aid in helping her understand the disease. The residents of Maplewood became real people to her. She found much that is positive, a revised notion that Alzheimer’s makes people into zombies. She began to think of Alzheimer’s as a disease of freedom, devoid of ulterior motives.
She became enchanted with the notion of Alzheimer’s as Zen enlightenment. In Zen theory, Alzheimer’s is a detaching disease. Kenneth Brummer-Smith, chair of the geriatric department as Florida State Medical School said, “Consider Zen, which is all about clearing your mind, detaching from your thoughts, grounding yourself in the moment. That’s Alzheimer’s”
Kessler’s personal fear of developing Alzheimer’s gradually moderated to acceptance of liberating views. After months of pondering, she concluded that she would rather spend her waning days, walking around clueless, holding a chocolate chip cookie in her hand, being hugged by big, pillowy women than lying in a hospital (hooked up to I V’s) alert, cognizant, with every memory intact.
Since four and one-half million people are afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease, a wide readership of “well” people should find Dancing with Rose a book to contemplate. The book stresses that people with Alzheimer’s are capable of love, friendship, and understanding.
Lauren Kessler has used the same approach that Barbara Ehrenreich did in writing Nickeled and Dimed, the investigation of a worker struggling to survive on minimum wage income. Kessler directs the graduate program of literary non-fiction at the Univ. of Oregon.She is the author of five nonfiction books and many periodical articles. |
