In our group, and others are much the same way, I think what people want … We do the diagnosis and we do the treatment but lots of times, diagnosis and initial treatment is started by neurology or started at the Cleveland Clinic or some other place. Then, as the disease progresses, we take care of them because there’s really not a lot that some of the other specialists have to offer at that point. They’ve done a good job up until then but they have all these other people that they need to diagnose and treat. In a good healthcare system, I think, you would see those folks, as they progress, come to geriatricians, to people like us, to family physicians, the internists.
One of the things that I think we offer that’s very important to them is we’ll make the journey with you. We’re being with more than doing to. I think that’s really what they want. They want to be able to call us up on the phone and talk about a problem or talk about something that they did to say, “Was this the right thing?” For instance, a few years ago, a wife called me up and said, “My husband doesn’t think I’m his wife anymore and he wants me to leave.” I was fearful that she was going to ask what should I do but she said, “This is what I did. Tell me what you think.” She said, “I went in the other room. I changed clothes. I brought our wedding album in and I said, “You know, it’s wonderful being married to you. I was just looking at our wedding album.””
I said, “I would have done exactly the same thing,” which actually … The point of that story more than anything else is that we learn so much from patients and caregivers and even people who don’t participate in clinical trials teach us a lot. That’s one that I won’t forget because it was so useful. Not everything works every time but the more caregivers have the opportunity to share things with each other … That’s what our local chapter, the Alzheimer's Association is quite good and they have lots of support groups. That’s a lot of what they do. Their social workers and others in the local chapter will spend time with families and bring support groups together and share those kinds of things. It’s the journey. It really is the journey that is important.
