Saturday Morning News

Jacqueline Marcell Discusses 'How to Survive Caring For Aging Parents'

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says some 52 million Americans care for a disabled or sick family member. Now, depending on the resources available, the work can become a burden or a labor of love.

The book "Elder Rage: How To Survive Caring for Aging Parents," offers some support and tips for caregivers. Another subtitle is "Or Take My Father, Please." The author is Jacqueline Marcell. She is joining us this morning from our Los Angeles bureau, where it is awfully early.

Thank you for getting up early on our behalf, Jacqueline. Good to see you.

JACQUELINE MARCELL, AUTHOR, "ELDER RAGE": Thank you for having me.

O'BRIEN: All right, what prompted you? I know this has come from personal experience. Just give our viewers a sense of what prompted you to write this book.

MARCELL: Well, I was having to take care of my elderly parents for almost a year without a day off, trying to get control over my father, who had been very controlling and dominating his whole life. And that didn't change when he got older and got dementia. It was starting and I didn't understand what was happening to him. And he used every manipulation from a lifetime of manipulations to hold onto control.

So it's fear based, it's frustration based and trying to manage those behaviors, it was just unbelievable what I went through and I said I've got to write a book. I don't want anyone to go through what I've just done and I can help them short-circuit their efforts much faster.

O'BRIEN: Jacqueline, who did you turn to in the expert department to help you along as you researched this book?

MARCELL: Well, what happened was I went through so many efforts to try to get control and his behaviors were just so, I just didn't understand it. And my message to the adult children and the spouses is when your loved one does something that strikes you as illogical or irrational, it is. That's a big flag. Get through to the Alzheimer's Association. That's my biggest thing. Those are the people that finally helped me and I didn't understand that. The name -- and I think most people are kind of afraid of that, oh, Alzheimer's, they don't want to deal with that, don't want to acknowledge that that's what it may be when these are the experts in all forms of dementia. Alzheimer's is just one type. There's many, many kinds of dementia.

So you want to get there, they are very familiar with all these behavioral problems that you're going to start experiencing and they will get you the right help. So I can't say strong enough.

And I wanted to give the Alzheimer's national number real quick. It's 800-272-3900. And that's where you need to start to get help and they will really help you.

O'BRIEN: All right, we'll try to get that number back on the screen a little bit later in the program.

MARCELL: OK.

O'BRIEN: Let me, if you had to single out any particular aspect about dealing with Alzheimer's in an elderly parent that is most challenging, I'm sure there are a panoply of things that come to mind, but can you, in the interests of condensing it down, can you give us a sense of what's the hardest part of it?

MARCELL: Well, it's managing those behaviors, whether it's vascular dementia, which is what my parents have and my father with a secondary Alzheimer's. It's managing those behaviors where most people go into denial. And what I want people to understand is dementia is very intermittent. It comes and goes. So when you see that first sign, don't sweep it under the carpet. Don't go into denial, you know, I don't want to acknowledge what just happened there because there are medications now that we can, we're so blessed to be living in this day and age where if you get the medication into your loved one, you can delay the onset of dementia by two, three, maybe even four years.

So if you can keep your loved one in an early stage dementia where they're just having some memory loss and some minor behavioral things, you're not going into a second stage dementia, which is going to require a tremendous amount of care and financially, emotionally, every aspect is going to be much harder.

So it's just so much important that you get that early diagnosis.

O'BRIEN: All right, just briefly, we're just about out of time, I want to call attention first of all to our viewers, the lower third of your screen. There's that phone number that Jacqueline just handed out and we thanks to our fast fingered typists in the control room for that. But just briefly, for viewers watching who feel they might be encountering a similar problem, what should they take away from this? What should they do besides the obvious suggestion to go buy your book? MARCELL: Yes. I've got a Web site. It's www.elderrage.com. And I've got a free early online dementia test by a Dr. Rodman Shankell (ph), who's founded the U.C. Irvine Alzheimer's Center and he's treated 5,000 people with dementia. You can go on my site and link to his early diagnosis. This will accurately diagnose within 94 percent accuracy if your loved one -- you can take the test for yourself or for your loved one and it will tell you if you need to get further evaluation from a geriatric psychiatrist and go to the Alzheimer's Association and get appropriate help.

Whether it's a disease process that's starting, that very, very early stages is what my mission is, is to get to the 76 million baby boomers and say don't wait till you're in a crisis. Get that early diagnosis. Get the medications. Then you can implement some of the behavior modification, which we did on my father. And my book is a success story, how you can still have a good life after dementia if it's properly managed medically and behaviorally and we turned around my father at 85, which is no small feat, and got him into adult day care and managed the brain chemistry because I got to the right people that knew how to do that.

O'BRIEN: Good place to end it, and good to hear that part of your personal story as well. And once again, the Web site up there lower third. And once again, thanks to those fast people in the control room. www.elderrage.com. Jacqueline Marcell, thanks for being with us. Continued good luck with your book, "Elder Rage" or "Take My Father, Please: How To Survive Caring For Aging Parents" is the title and presumably available at a bookstore near you. Thanks again.

MARCELL: Thank you so much for having me on.

O'BRIEN: All right.

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