When my husband and I were married, our best man, who had been my husband’s housemate in medical school, gave a toast about the art of medicine and the medicine of art. The book I am about to share with you is a shining example of both.
Courtesy of Dana Walrath
Whether or not you have personal experience with Alzheimer’s Disease, it’s hard to believe that it won’t eventually touch all our lives in some way. Vermont artist Dana Walrath’s graphic memoir Aliceheimer’s Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass tells of the three years she and her family cared for her mother Alice in their home when she was no longer able to care for herself.
Courtesy of Dana Walrath
As a medical anthropologist, (a field that “draws upon social, cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology to better understand those factors which influence health and well being”), in addition to being an artist and writer, Walrath taps her breadth of cultural knowledge to reframe a seemingly dire situation into an opportunity for love, understanding, and reconnection.
Courtesy of Dana Walrath
Using the improvisational technique of “yes, and…” Walrath and her family were able to cope with and acknowledge her mother’s hallucinations by labeling them a ‘superpower’. This approach not only provided Alice with a sense of dignity surrounding her altered perceptions, but also allowed the family to move forward from a positive footing, rather than focusing on her dementia as a source of distress and argument.
Courtesy of Dana Walrath
There is an optimistic power and hopefulness in Walrath’s illustrations. They are images of Alice and her world, her collaged bathrobe created with the pages of an inexpensive edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. That particular artistic choice is all the more fitting considering that Carroll’s story is one of Walrath’s mother Alice’s favorites, in addition to drawing an apt parallel with the havoc Alzheimer’s Disease wreaks on its sufferers’ sense of reality.
Courtesy of Dana Walrath
Aliceheimer’s examines Alzheimer’s through a new lens – one from which, as Walrath exemplifies, positive aspects can be found. For instance, she outlines the unexpected gift of getting to know her parent as she was as a child. With Alzheimer’s a patient often lives in the world of her childhood, so by accepting her reality rather than fighting it, one has access to the unique opportunity of experiencing it with her.
Courtesy of Dana Walrath
For those of us unfamiliar with the concept of Graphic Medicine, Aliceheimer’s is an example of what a powerfully positive vehicle for communication graphic narratives can be. Walrath’s uplifting images lend an enhanced understanding of Alzheimer’s while shifting our perception away from the horror we normally associate with dementia. She explains to Nancy Stearns Bercaw of the NY Times that, as a person who had always read but who was no longer able to follow the thread of standard prose, Alice became immersed graphic novels. In telling their personal story, Walrath “wanted to use a form that a person with dementia could access”. I believe that expression of her empathy serves as a better testimonial of the book than any praise I could write.
Courtesy of Dana Walrath
If you’d like to know more, listen to Dana describe her experiences in this Vermont Edition interview; my brief synopsis can’t begin to do justice to hearing her relate the story in her own voice. I promise you will be moved by this glimpse into the reciprocal powers of art and medicine in her very capable hands.
Courtesy of Dana Walrath
Articles surrounding Aliceheimer’s Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass can be read on the websites of NPR, the New York Times, and the Massachusetts Review.
