Synopses & Reviews
When Aaron Alterra's wife, Stella, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, she was an active, vibrant, eighty-year-old preparing for a cello performance. Becoming Stella's primary caregiver, Alterra engaged in a crash course of self-education to prepare for that changing role and decided to write a self-help book for others. An accomplished fiction writer, Alterra found himself writing a memoir instead -- the story of his continuing journey with Stella and the life they now lead. What he has produced is captivating for the general reader, and helpful to anyone facing the prospect of sharing Alterra's fate.
Synopsis
Aaron and Stella Alterra had been married for more than sixty years when Aaron began to notice puzzling lapses in his wife's memory. Innocuous at first, they became more severe and more alarming. After a series of appointments and tests, the Alterras were informed that Stella was one of the more than 4.5 million Americans with Alzheimer's disease.Combining medical research on the disease and often-painful anecdotes of memory loss, deteriorating motor functions, personality shifts, support-group and daycare experiences, and drug trials, Alterra chronicles his transformation from husband to caregiver after his wife's diagnosis.More than a chronology of one family's experience of Alzheimer's disease, The Caregiver is an intelligent, beautifully reflective testimony to how family members turned caregivers become the ultimate advocates for their loved ones in the face of a disease with no cure.