
“If you treat a disease, you win, you lose; if you treat a person, you win, no matter what the outcome.”
(Patch Adams)
The movie, Patch Adams (which I love), is based on the true story of a heroic man, Hunter “Patch” Adams, determined to become a medical doctor because he enjoys helping people.
He ventured where no doctor had ventured before, using humour and pathos, and understanding that people are not their disease or condition. They are still people with human emotions.
If you [we] all ditch the harmful paradigm known as BPSD, you too will see that people with dementia are still people, and most of the responses they have to the ‘challenging’ sitioations thrust upon them, or the harmful way their responses, are referred to as the pathology of dementia.
As I said to Peter Goers on Thursday night, when he said the person he knows with dementia is ‘disappearing’, as first said by John Sandblom, I said, no, we are not disappearing; ‘people with dementia are just changing in ways that you are not.’
Oh, and by the way, who really wants to be referred to as their disease?????
Curious…
We are on the same wave length my friend, Patch Adams is also one of my fav movies. Sometimes so much red tape gets in the way of treating a persons as a person dementia or not. Hope you are keeping ok love and hugs Ness
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Love and hugs to you too Ness xxx
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Hear hear Kate! I’m 100% with you.
Is this your quote or someone else’s: “people with dementia are just changing in ways that you are not.”
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It is part of a comment made by John Sandblom in 2014, which I regularly refer to. I’ll send you the full quote, which I use as one of four definitions of dementia when I present. Kx
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Thanks Kate ❤
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