Elder Rage
 Jacqueline Marcell
 (Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
 2001 Impressive Press
 ISBN: 0967970318

Or -- Take My Father...Please!
How To Survive Caring For Aging Parents.

Are you ready for a roller-coaster ride? Then Jacqueline Marcell's got a book for you in her Elder Rage, a not so gentle amble into the sunset of her parents' lives. In fact it is a riotous gallop across shadows of former selves, into dazzling moments of dementia & memories, & the chronicle of collapsing relationships. Everything that could go wrong, does. Everything you hope you won't have to face, you will.

Written at a breathless, vertigo-inducing speed, Elder Rage tells you everything you don't want to know about the decline into senility with guffaw-inducing humor & not a fragment of dignity.

I was exhausted by the end of the first chapter, caught my breath during the second, only to start racing again in the third, & so on through all sixteen chock-a-block chapters recording Jacqueline Marcell's experience of her parents' rapid decline into seemingly sudden old age. In retrospect, the clues were all there for a long time.

Read Elder Rage & save yourself a bundle on shrink bills! Be warned! Be prepared! If we thought our parents impossible when we were kids, imagine what they'll be like when we're adults! Old Age, with the addition of the unrelenting onset of Alzheimer's disease, is not for sissies (as in the faint-hearted)! Check your innocence & sentimentality at the door, & be prepared for the absurd, the irreverent & the frustrations of coping with a mind that has begun to unravel.

The comic opera goes on & on as too the predictable set-ups for fall after fall -- loss of reasoning, gain of foul mouth, inability to remember who anyone is, seeing enemies everywhere, dissolving timetables. Coping with a parent raises all sorts of taboos & duties, the more so because of senility or disease, & is like raising an unruly child...except with parents you can't swat their bottoms or send to their rooms or teach them anything!

Elder Rage is, as the author puts it, a “...heart-wrenching experience...finally turned into a mission possible [in which]...I hope I've made you laugh, helped you feel less alone, taught you much -- and I hope I've helped you cope.” (Page 270). It is also mesmerizing, frustrating, entertaining & informative, concluding with what this author learnt about Behavior Modification, plus A Physician's Guide To Treating Dementia offered by Dr. Rodman Shankle, & a long list of Valuable Resources.

Jacqueline Marcell's Elder Rage has been endorsed by a multitude of celebrities. She has a radio talk show out of California called “Coping with Caregiving” on Saturdays between 3:00 & 5pm Pacific Time:
www.wsradio.com/copingwithcaregiving
Her website is: www.ElderRage.com
(09/14/03)

Rebecca