An uplifting and informative journey of a loving daughter caring for her mother with Alzheimers

books:

	• Making an Exit: A Mother-Daughter Drama with Alzheimer's, Machine Tools, and Laughter Elinor Fuchs Holt Paperbacks, 2006 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A treat and a tonic...

This is a wonderful book. It's about a downer subject-Alzheimer's---but manages to be funny, inspiring, hopeful and informative about the process of AD. Other reviewers are right---it is a page turner.
So what an achievement---an upbeat, engrossing book about a human tragedy. I've read a lot of first person accounts about the dementia of a relative and this is the best. It should become a classic. And now the author Fuchs, who teaches at the Yale School of Drama, should make a play of this.

An uplifting and informative journey of a loving daughter caring for her mother with Alzheimers

This book is fascinating reading, and very inspirational for anyone who desires to make the most of the time remaining with their loved one with Alzheimers. This is not a "Stage of Alzheimers" primer, but a fascinating memoir of a daughter caring for her mother with Alzheimers. Elinor Fuchs' story is unique because she finds ways to turn the difficulties of her mother's Alzheimers into opportunities for love, care, and family healing.

Elinor Fuchs, a professor of drama at Yale University, seems so comfortable in her mother's fractured world, and finds the laughter within always. One very poignant moment occurs when the author is trying to determine whether her mother would rather return to her home of 30 years, or stay in an assisted living facility. Her mother responds: "Why go back in life when you can go forward."

This book will bring tears, laughter, and wisdom to those who take the time to savor it.

Gerry Puhara

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outstanding

Laughter is the key to surviving a mother with Altzheimers. This story is so full of laughter and love that it eases the pain of the adventure, maybe not while its going on, but certainly after the "exit." It's a non-stop read at any stage of the experience even if you got along with your mother just fine.

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Like reading a well-written script, part drama and part comedy.

Elinor Fuchs writes of navigating the long-distance caregiver role, first with the help of part-time paid caregivers and then live-in caregivers. Care eventually moves to an assisted living facility and finally a nursing home. Fuchs marks each transition with mixed feelings over meeting her mother's dependency needs while trying to preserve her independence. Fortunately, her loving uncle was available to make decisions with her until his own death. Fuchs' intelligence, good humor, and compassion enable her to enjoy her mother in spite of her limitations. She begins to reframe the meaning of her mother's fractured language: "I see Lil not only as a `patient' and `sick.' But as an artist, spinning poetry of a private world, and I began to carry a little tape recorder to catch these exchanges." As a result, each chapter of the book begins with an excerpt that reveals their playful, wacky, and sometimes profound conversations. This memoir is filled with funny anecdotes that show how her mother retained her essential self well throughout the disease.

This book is a joy to read. More than a narrative about aging and loss, it is a story of love's triumph. "The last ten years," writes Fuchs, "they were our best." If only more family caregivers in the midst of such adversity could grasp such an unexpected gift.

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reviews: page 1, 2

Written with ?humanity, compassion, and dignity,? an unexpected love story of a career-driven mother, a once-resentful daughter, and a ten-year battle with Alzheimer?s (Los Angeles Times)

At a time when such things were rare, Elinor Fuchs?s mother, Lil, escaped a miserable marriage and left young Elinor to be raised by grandparents as she traveled the world selling automotive parts and military gear. With her stunning looks and ambition, Lil was less a mother to love than a figure to admire?and, once in college, Elinor determined to keep her distance.
Making an Exit is the moving account of what happens afterward, following Lil?s diagnosis with Alzheimer?s. As the disease progresses, both women are transformed: Elinor, with growing compassion, becomes her mother?s mother; Lil, regularly speaking of ?love,? connects with her daughter as never before through the poetry of her disintegrating language.
With wit, wisdom, and theatrical flair, Making an Exit tells an uncommon story of a parent?s decline?and a rekindled relationship. ?The last ten years,? writes Fuchs, ?they were our best.?

?How these women touched me! Driven and real, Making an Exit hurtles toward its truths with uncommon feeling and
honesty.? ?Gish Jen, author of The Love Wife

?Tremendous . . . brilliant . . . filled with unexpected glimmers of hope, wisdom, and joy.? ?The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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