Two different approaches to Alzheimers:A. If you get a moment, please visit Kathy Hatfield’s blog at www.KnowItAlz.com. Kathy is a caregiver in North Carolina. She is the primary caregiver for her 79-year-old father who has Alzheimers. Earlier in his life, he was a stockbroker in New York City. Her daily accounts are insightful, warm, compassionate and bring a genuine light-heartedness that only a caregiver could bring. What you take away is that ‘yes’ her father has lost much of his memory, but he is still very much her father, a human being, and someone who is still very much alive. Aging is all about living … . even at the very end of life. Thanks for sharing your blog with us Kathy.B. The New York Post, a tabloid newspaper recently broke a story that New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner reportedly has Alzheimers. The Headline: Tragic Madness of King George. Peter Himler writes about it at his blog The Flack. Other blogs also hopped on this, using terms of senility, maddness, etc.Last month, Post sports columnist Phil Mushnick wrote that, ‘All reasonable signs indicate that [Steinbrenner’s] dementia … is now so profound that he is being carefully hidden from public view.’Getting Rid of the StigmaGeorge Steinbrenner is a public figure (and one that a lot of people don’t like) but let’s get rid of the potshots and embarrasment that seem to be attached to losing one’s memory. Kathy hits it head on and doesn’t ‘put her father in the closet.’ Unless a cure is found, many of us reading this today are going to have dementia or Ahlzheimers. Consider these stats from the Alzheimer’s Association:- 26.6 million people worldwide were living with the disease in 2006.- Researchers predict that global prevalence of Alzheimer’s will quadruple by 2050 to more than 100 million, at which time 1 in 85 persons worldwide will be living with the disease.- More than 40 percent of those cases will be in late stage Alzheimer’s requiring a high level of attention equivalent to nursing home care.