tion>
Aliceheimer’s
Susan Merrill Squier and Ian Williams, General Editors
Editorial Collective
MK Czerwiec (Northwestern University)
Michael J. Green (Penn State University College of Medicine)
Kimberly R. Myers (Penn State University College of Medicine)
Scott T. Smith (Penn State University)
Books in the Graphic Medicine series are inspired by a growing awareness of the value of comics as an important resource for communicating about a range of issues broadly termed “medical.” For medical practitioners, patients, families, and caregivers dealing with illness and disability, graphic narrative enlightens complicated or difficult experience. For scholars in literary, cultural, and comics studies, the genre articulates a complex and powerful analysis of illness, medicine, and disability and a rethinking of the boundaries of “health.” The series includes original comics from artists and non-artists alike, such as self-reflective “graphic pathographies” or comics used in medical training and education, as well as monographic studies and edited collections from scholars, practitioners, and medical educators.
Other titles in the series:
MK Czerwiec, Ian Williams, Susan Merrill Squier, Michael J. Green, Kimberly R. Myers, and Scott T. Smith, Graphic Medicine Manifesto
Ian Williams, The Bad Doctor: The Troubled Life and Times of Dr. Iwan James
Peter Dunlap-Shohl, My Degeneration: A Journey Through Parkinson’s
Aneurin Wright, Things to Do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park . . . When You’re 29 and Unemployed
Dana Walrath
Aliceheimer’s
Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass
The Pennsylvania State University Press
University Park, Pennsylvania
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Walrath, Dana, author. | Walrath, Dana. Aliceheimer’s. 2013.
Reprint of (manifestation):
Title: Aliceheimer’s : Alzheimer’s through the looking glass / Dana Walrath.
Other titles: Graphic medicine.
Summary: “A graphic memoir of the author’s experiences of her mother’s battle with dementia. Illustrates the two-way nature of storytelling as a process that heals both the giver and the receiver of story”—Provided by publisher.
Description: University Park, Pennsylvania : The Pennsylvania State University Press, [2016] | Series: Graphic medicine | Reprint of: Aliceheimer’s / Dana Walrath. Yerevan, Armenia, Harvest Publishers, 2013.
Identifiers: lccn 2015048696 | isbn 9780271074689 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: | mesh: Alzheimer Disease | Caregivers—psychology | Mother-Child Relations | Graphic Novels | Personal Narratives | Popular Works
Classification: lcc rc523 | nlm wt 17 | ddc 616.8/31—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015048696
Copyright © 2016 Dana Walrath
All rights reserved
Printed by PBtisk a.s.
Printed in the Czech Republic
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802-1003
The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992.
graphic concept and design: Haroutiun Samuelian /quadrum
Alice and Dana, camping 1960
Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass
Part One of the Aliceheimer’s Project
Aliceheimer’s found me rather than the other way around. In February of 2008, for the second time in six months, my mother, Alice, was kicked out of her apartment. The reason? Her Alzheimer’s disease. My sister and I looked for alternatives around New York City, her lifelong home. We were hoping to keep her near the relatives to whom she was the closest and near her friends. Instead, she moved hundreds of miles north to live with me and my family in the Vermont woods. Vermont winters are long and cold. She hated snow. I was the daughter who got on her nerves. The feeling was mutual.
It wasn’t nobility or martyrdom that led me to think this was a good plan. On the surface, I couldn’t bear to see my mother in the lockdown “memory care” unit. Impaired as she was, all her social graces were intact. Alice was as loquacious, intelligent, and charming as ever, and the people in memory care often don’t speak much. That she knew us might ground her. The unfamiliar fields and woods might curb her wandering and her attempts to walk home. Our farmhouse was peaceful. Nature could soothe her.
Although all of this was true, my real motivations were deep down and hidden. We had unfinished business. I wanted to create a bond with my mother, to redo the past, and to fill the hole inside of me. In the middle of dementia, somehow, my mother wanted to do the same.
Over the next few years, this is exactly what we did. In the process, all the disparate threads of my life intertwined: creative writing, visual art, and medical anthropology.
In fact, I was a bitter medical anthropologist when my demented mother moved in with us. Exhausted by years of teaching in a medical school, I was the professor responsible for incorporating culture, diversity, death, dying, and humanism into the required medical curriculum. The last thing I needed was another hard job.
Anthropologists often enter the world of biomedicine because U.S. medical schools are required to demonstrate that they have trained their students to be “culturally competent.” The anthropological knowledge that facilitates caring for diverse patients is mandated by national accreditation standards. This cultural competency, unlike anthropological training, is meant to be acquired rapidly, according to the axiom that prevails in medical education: “See one. Do one. Teach one.”
As an anthropologist, I wanted to do more. I wanted students to be able to understand medical systems as cultural systems; to see the social and political determinants of sickness and health; to grasp the social aspects of science;
