“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…