Connecting Through Compassion

This book candidly discusses the challenges of living with the personality and behavior changes brain cancer brings, and offers practical tools to make the journey easier. Joni Aldrich and Neysa Peterson have each cared for a spouse with a brain illness. They have combined their insights in this practical, straight-talking guide. Readers will learn: symptoms a brain cancer patient may experience; how to create and maintain a warm, comfortable and safe environment; methods to use if communication becomes an issue; how to deal with changes in personality, behavior, and emotions, including loss of social inhibition skills; how to handle issues related to changes in memory and the resulting confusion; how to work through indifference, sadness, and depression towards some peace; how to cope with self-destructive behavior-safety is your number one concern; how to have end-of-life discussions and fulfill final wishes. When a family member or friend is diagnosed with cancer, life as you know it has ended. Not only must you face the chaos of doctors' visits, exhausting treatments, and sleepless nights, you must try to savor every precious moment with your loved one. When the diagnosis is brain cancer, you must endure all this plus one more challenge: the person you love may look the same, and sound the same-but he or she is not the same. His or her personality may change in extreme ways. A kind and loving person may become angry and say hurtful things. A warm, upbeat person may withdraw or behave in self-destructive ways. The essence of your loved one can disappear, even as he or she continues to live. With the tools in this book, you can continue to love and be loved during this difficult crisis. "The last weeks of Gordon's life were spent with someone that I barely knew and didn't know how to approach. It took me two years of counseling to get through the scars. It didn't have to be that way for me. And it certainly doesn't have to be that way for you." ~Joni Aldrich