A good read...

[Guest guest]

Not about dementia - but about caregiving. What a good read this was:

Never

by Olga Sowchuk

The word never, by definition, means in no way, not again, at no

time, in no case..never. It's a word that those of you who are brain

injury survivors or caregivers of a brain injured loved one, heard at

some point. Was it in the beginning of this adventure, when your

loved one lay in a coma and the doctors said he/she would never

regain consciousness? Was it once your loved one entered therapy, and

someone told you that he/she would never walk, talk, see, eat, feel,

laugh? Was it further along when you were told that your loved one

would never live at home, never be able to do anything on his or her

own, or that things would never be the same? Never is a long, long

time.

When my domestic partner, Al Calabrese, had his head-on collision on

August 11, 1995, the ER doctor said he'd never make it to the NICU.

When he made it to the NICU, the trauma physician said he'd never

make it to tomorrow. When tomorrow came, he said over and over, that

Al would never be anything more than a " vegetable, lying in a bed

hooked to a feeding tube " . He knew this because he had seen " a

thousand, no 2,000 cases like Al's...there was no hope " .

Well to me, never meant only one thing. Never blindly believe the

doctors and never give up. I didn't and neither did Al.

....

Continue:

http://caregiver.org/caregiver/jsp/content_node.jsp?nodeid=827