Cruel Illness Has Two-Fold Effect

Dear Ann Landers: Recently, while reading the comics in the newspaper, I ran across a Doonesbury strip about an Alzheimer’s victim who could not remember what was going on from moment to moment and didn’t understand why others thought she was ill. The comic strip was supposed to be a humorous characterization of an Alzheimer’s victim.

The day that strip appeared, I buried my 90-year-old grandmother, who had suffered from this tragic disease. When I saw that insensitive depiction, my heart fell to my knees. Alzheimer’s is nothing to laugh at. Fourteen million people will get Alzheimer’s by the middle of the next century if a cure isn’t discovered. It is tragic not only for the person who is stricken, because he or she cannot understand what is happening, but it is a nightmare for the family and friends who must stand by helplessly and watch someone they care about deteriorate.

Here is the message I would like to pass on to those whose loved ones have this terrible illness: Please be patient and understanding, and know that the best thing you can do is keep loving him or her and be supportive. I don’t want to live with the guilt of losing my patience with my grandmother. I want only to remember how wonderful she was and how much she loved me. - Heavy-Hearted in Kentucky

Dear Heavy-Hearted: Your warmth and sensitivity are moving. I’m glad you wrote. Alzheimer’s is the cruelest of all illnesses. It kills twice, first the mind and then the body. To make fun of these victims is the height of insensitivity. I can understand your anger.

I have met the cartoonist Garry Trudeau, the author of Doonesbury. He is a brilliant and enormously sensitive person. When you are in print seven days a week, as he is, it is impossible not to produce an occasional klunker. I know what it’s like because I have produced a few myself. Let’s give him a pass on this one.

Dear Ann Landers: I have a 14-year-old daughter whom I love a great deal and miss very much. Her mother and I divorced eight years ago, and my ex-wife got custody. (I did not fight it.) They moved thousands of miles away, which means I am able to have my daughter with me only two weeks in the summer and for a few days during the Christmas holidays. I have always paid child support promptly and without complaint. My daughter has told her mother repeatedly that she wants to spend more time with me, but my ex-wife insists it is not in the girl’s best interest and refuses to cooperate.

I am now married to a wonderful woman whom my daughter adores. I am sure my new wife is not the problem because the visitation rules were in effect before I married her.

My daughter is terribly upset about her mother’s intransigence and has said she plans to leave home when she turns 18 and will never return. I don’t want her to do this, but I don’t know how to get my ex to lighten up. Do you have any suggestions? - Tuscaloosa Papa

Dear Papa: One of the ugliest aspects of divorce rears its head when one or both parties use the children as a club to beat the other over the head. It appears that this is what is happening in your case.

Is there someone who can appeal to your ex-wife’s sense of decency (a clergyman, family doctor, close friend or family member) and explain that the daughter is going to walk out of her life permanently at the first legal minute if she doesn’t loosen up? I hope so for the welfare of all concerned.