For 10 years, A.B. Amis shepherded his wife, Frances, through the dark maze of Alzheimer's disease.
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The job of caregiver was tough, the hours long, the emotional toll enormous. A.B. watched as Frances disappeared little by little. This slow death left A.B. both immensely sad and incredibly lonely, very typical emotions for a caregiver.
"Caregiving is overwhelming, and there's no reward," says geriatric psychiatrist William Uffner, M.D., medical director for the Older Adult Program at Friends Hospital in Philadelphia. "Sometimes you wind up doing things that you would do for your 6-month- or 3 1/2-year-old child."
But a caregiver of older people doesn't get the positive feedback a child gives—growth, development, a glimpse of a future, Uffner says. Confronting a progressive series of losses is just incredibly disappointing. "And then you don't even have your husband or your wife when it gets too frustrating and you have a meltdown," he says.
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