STiLL ALiCE: Lisa Genova
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STiLL ALiCE: Lisa Genova
Image by lissalou66
Although this is toted as a fictional book all aspects are true to taste so to speak, the medical diagnosis, progression, drug treatments, etc. with the exception of a fictional drug used in a clinical trial in this book, which in the postscipt the author notes this and states there are other drugs in trial within the same guidelines.
With all that being said, this is a truly heatbreaking and scary story of a woman who on the verge of turning 50 discovers she has early onset Alzeimers. The timeline of this book spans a two year period which details the very rapid decline of someone who was intellectually stellar to a state of near complete unknowingness.
What really made it a page turner for me is that it could happen to any of us without prejudice! It made you think what would I do? How would I handle the news?
The main character decided that she has a fail safe way of keeping her fate in her hands. Knowing she didn’t want to live with this disease in it’s progressed stages she sets herself up with a simple quiz that she took daily. She programmed her BlackBerry for a reminder to ask 5 questions with the instruction if she ever had difficulty answering them, to go to her computer, open the file named Butterfly and follow the instructions completely. Not wanting to give any more of the story away, I will leave it at that.
Highly recommend this book too! Loved it (despite the less that happy topic).
kozika’s 黒夢’s Album
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黒夢 is the best!
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kozika
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Comfortably Numb
Image by elycefeliz
articles.sfgate.com/2008-02-21/entertainment/17141898_1_p…
When writer and social-service professional Charles Barber began working with the mentally ill and chronically homeless in the ’80s, he had a hard time explaining his job to friends. They were frequently confused by names and descriptions of illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and the accompanying prescription drug nomenclature seemed like a foreign language.
. . . By the end of the ’90s, though, things had changed. Barber found that a huge chunk of the U.S. population had achieved fluency in both the diagnoses and the drug treatments for a variety of mental illnesses.
In his second book, "Comfortably Numb," Barber explores the world of psychopharmacology, something many of us already take for granted in a post-"Prozac Nation" world. He charts the rise of "the medicalization of unhappiness," investigates what is known and unknown about brain chemistry, and offers alternatives to easy pill-popping for common ailments such as mild depression.
It’s not, Barber is quick to say, that prescription drugs have no place in mental health treatment or that advances haven’t been made in drug treatments. Far from it. But a combination of the deregulation of drug advertising, striking growth in numbers of recognized mental illnesses and the rise of managed care has sold the American public on the notion that problems such as depression and anxiety are best cured by medication.
"TV advertising of drugs is illegal everywhere but the U.S. and New Zealand," Barber says. "It’s made them household objects, and led to drugs being thought of as commodities like Diet Coke and Chevrolet." The result of this increased accessibility has been that the abuse of prescription drugs has skyrocketed, with young people using fewer illicit drugs than filched legal ones, which are no less dangerous.
Now that SSRI antidepressants such as Prozac and Paxil are almost two decades old and depression, anxiety and stress have only loomed larger in the American consciousness, it’s time to re-evaluate treatment options, Barber says. He wants more attention paid to the advances in cognitive behavioral therapy and other therapeutic techniques in alleviating symptoms of unhappiness.
"When I talk about alternative approaches, I want to emphasize that these diseases are very complex and chronic. We need to guard against the idea that anything is a panacea," Barber says. "That’s how we got into this bind. It’s a very American idea that right around the corner, if we only try this one thing, things are going to be wonderful."