Tag Archives: Maria Shriver

medical news, national news

Nancy Reagan’s lasting legacy: Alzheimer’s awareness

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Nancy Reagan will be remembered for many noble and good things.

The former first lady — who died this past weekend at age 94 — was a champion for her husband, the 40th president of the United States. She became arguably his closest advisor and by many accounts was his best friend. She sought to protect his image and his legacy and most historians today she succeeded famously at protecting both of those things.

She also was an advocate for Alzheimer’s research and that’s what I want to focus on here.

You see, many of us have intimate knowledge of that disease.

On Nov. 5, 1994, President Reagan penned that astonishingly poignant farewell letter to the nation as he disclosed his diagnosis. He and his bride then said their “long goodbye” to each other. Nearly a decade later, President Reagan would succumb to the complications of that disease.

Read the president’s letter here.

I’ve told you at times of my own experience with the disease, having watched my mother wither away and die 32 years ago from its effects at the too-tender age of 61. Take my word for it: It ain’t pretty.

Other family members of well-known Americans have taken up the cause for Alzheimer’s research. I think most often of Maria Shriver, whose father — Sargent Shriver — was rendered helpless by the affliction before he died. Shriver has vowed to carry the fight forward.

Nancy Reagan sought to raise research funds. She lobbied Congress to do more for the families who are the actual sufferers of this malady. They are the victims, who watch their loved ones lose their cognitive skill, their memory, their ability to do simple things, such as bathe and eat.

All those things happened to her beloved husband and she fought as hard as she could until the day he died and later — until her own health deteriorated.

The world she leaves behind needs more powerful advocates who will take up the cudgel for other family members who must endure the heartbreak of Alzheimer’s disease.

Thank you, Mrs. Reagan, for the waging this noble effort.

We haven’t finished the fight just yet, but we’re a lot closer to declaring victory.

 

medical news

Shriver steps into Alzheimer’s battle

It’s presumptuous, I know, to refer to yourself and a famous person in the same sentence.

But I’ll do so anyway.

I feel Maria Shriver’s pain as she engages in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/13/opinions/shriver-wipe-out-alzheimers/index.html

This merciless killer claimed her father, the great Sargent Shriver, the way it took my own mother. It did so brutally and with extreme malice. It robbed Maria’s father of his towering intellect, just as it stole my own mother’s quick wit and intelligence.

I’m with Maria Shriver as she wages war on Alzheimer’s disease.

She notes in a CNN essay that the disease remains an unknown, despite the fact that it has claimed 5 million victims already — in the United States alone!

Her essay references a group called Wipe Out Alzheimer’s. Shriver writes: “We’re asking women to put together their own “brain trusts” in their communities — groups that will go out and do some muscular fund-raising. But equally important, these brain trusts will gather to discuss and disseminate information about what the disease is and isn’t. What are the warning signs we should look for in ourselves and our parents? What’s the difference between normal forgetfulness, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease? Can brain games or meditation slow cognitive decline? Do dietary supplements help?”

Shriver notes that women seem more inclined to get the disease than men. She also believes women hold the key to rounding up more money to pay for the research that is needed to fight this killer disease.

Shriver said: “It’s time for the narrative around Alzheimer’s to change. I remember when an HIV/AIDS diagnosis was a death sentence. I remember when cancer was a dirty word, and the prognosis was always grim. But AIDS and cancer activists are helping to take these diseases from terrifying to treatable, from hopeless to hopeful. We want to do the same with Alzheimer’s. We want to understand it, prevent it, treat it and beat it. Wipe Out Alzheimer’s is creating a global community of women activists, agitators and agents of change to do just that.”

You go, Maria Shriver. I’m betting you’ll find a lot of men ready and able to join the fight, too.