Read it all here.The first thing one would notice about Lulu is her smile. “Hello, dear, when is your party?” Lucille “Lulu” Weinstein beams at me. “I need to decide what to wear. What are you going to wear to the party? A blue dress or a pink one?”
Lulu’s effervescent and undeniably sweet personality easily charms. She’s the kind of lady who wants to have a nice time and look good doing it. The 87 year old who likes to put on lipstick and pull back her hair into a neat twist suffers from Alzheimer’s. It’s a chronic disease marked by bouts of confusion and a rather frightening sense of losing one’s identity.
Alzheimer’s leads Lulu to jump from asking about the weather to discussing a party she’s made up in her head. Lulu, a patient at Carmel Board and Care, California, is lucky. She’s cheerful and gentle, and has been placed by her loving family in a top nursing facility whose employees care for all of her basic needs as well as her emotional ones. She has a constant stream of visitors and is generally happy.
Many Americans, those who cannot afford first-rate private care, are not so lucky.
Americans 65 years or older were numbered at 39.6 million in 2009, making up 12.9 percent of the U.S. population or about one in every eight Americans. That number will increase, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is estimated that about 72.1 million older persons will make up the 65 plus age bracket by 2030. With a rising aging population comes a growing demand for special care facilities. Living longer means that diseases become long-term and chronic, and services are more expensive as people spend more time in facilities. Not everyone will be able to afford private care and will eventually come to rely on social welfare—but can governmental services, city and federal alike, cope with demands?
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