Pat Robertson's Alzheimer's Divorce Comments Demean Marriage

Please forgive me for disagreeing with you a bit. I am not trying to be disrespectful in anyway, but I work in a nursing home in a ward with residents who have dementia and Alzheimer's disease. You have married couples who have been together for years and years and in their supposed "golden years" find that one or both have that dreaded disease where you forget your family, your life, how to eat, how to do the most rudimentary things that we all take for granted. Let's say that it is your mother and father and you are barely making it in the economy with your own bills and your father starts staying up all night and walking out into the street while you are sleeping. Your mother is working herself to death, changing his clothes, cleaning up after his messes, (they love to wipe feces all over everything) and putting up with his fits of anger (they get angry and don't know why, often biting and hitting and kicking). So, you try to use the money you have, your parents have saved so that you can hire a full-time nurse to help. You find very quickly you can't afford it. You consider a nursing home, but to do that it has to be private pay because if you use medicare or medicaid, you cannot own a home or receive any income, it all goes to the nursing home. Now private pay to the worst nursing homes can run 4-6k a month. Can you afford that??

The next thing you try is taking care of him yourself. You miss a lot of work, spend a lot of money, and end up getting depressed because you have no life and your dad is getting worse and not better. He will never get better.

Another option is divorce, that way, the healthy spouse can keep her home and not lose everything she owns. The spouse with the Alzheimer's is perfectly happy at a nursing home with family visiting because he has lost all touch with who is family and who isn't. He has friends there, stimulation any time of day or night if needed. Someone strong enough to change his clothes, bathe, feed and spend time with him. He can continue his favorite past times if he can remember them. Mostly, he will enjoy sitting with others, having socials and wandering the halls for hours.

I have made one huge paragraph here, but I would like if you can for a moment imagine your mom not losing her home. Still being able to visit the man she loves and his monthly bills being paid by his funds and with Medicare. Not everyone has a nice retirement pension.

The above situation is what is happening to me and my family. Decisions will have to be made soon. Do I take away everything from my mother who is perfectly sane and healthy in her 80's...so that my dad can go to a nursing home, or find a way that God will most likely understand. It is a divorce, but it is not a true divorce of the heart, it is one of those situations where you have to do what you have to do to survive. Do you think God would not understand???

Melisa M Williams of VA 8:24PM January 18, 2012