Robertson Stirs Passions With Suggestion to Divorce an Alzheimer’s Patient

• Phunkie wrote on 2011-09-18 11:16

  With his suggestion this week that a man whose wife was far “gone” with Alzheimer’s should divorce her if he wanted a new companion, the television evangelist Pat Robertson stumbled into treacherous moral terrain, setting off storms of criticism and questions about a disease that shatters lives and families.
  
  Other conservative Christian leaders were swift to condemn his remarks as a call to violate the biblical sacrament of marriage. Many doctors and patient advocates had a more complex response, with many suggesting that Mr. Robertson, 81, had repeated misleading stereotypes about Alzheimer’s but had also broached an important subject, how spouses and other family members of dying patients can prevent their lives from being engulfed and start to move on.
  
  On his television program, “The 700 Club,” on Tuesday, Mr. Robertson took a call from a man asking how he should advise a friend whose wife was deep into dementia and no longer recognized him.
  
  “His wife as he knows her is gone,” the caller said, and the friend is “bitter at God for allowing his wife to be in that condition, and now he’s started seeing another woman.”
  
  “This is a terribly hard thing,” Mr. Robertson said, clearly struggling to think his way through a wrenching situation. “I hate Alzheimer’s. It is one of the most awful things, because here’s the loved one — this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly that person is gone.”
  
  “I know it sounds cruel,” he continued, “but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but to make sure she has custodial care, somebody looking after her.”
  
  When Mr. Robertson’s co-anchor on the program wondered if that was consistent with marriage vows, Mr. Robertson noted the pledge of “till death do us part,” but added, “This is a kind of death.”
  
  He said the question presented an ethical dilemma beyond his ability to answer. “I certainly wouldn’t put a guilt trip on you if you decided that you had to have companionship,” Mr. Robertson said, apparently suggesting divorce as a way to avoid the sin of adultery.
  
  The reaction from many evangelical leaders, who see lifelong, traditional marriage as the cornerstone of morality and society, was harsh and disbelieving.
  
  “This is more than an embarrassment,” Russell D. Moore, dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., wrote in a blog post on Thursday. “This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
  
  But Beth Kallmyer, senior director of constituent services at the Alzheimer’s Association in Chicago, declined to question Mr. Robertson’s remarks.
  
  “This is a challenging, devastating and eventually fatal illness, and it affects everybody differently,” Ms. Kallmyer said. “The most important thing is that families get help.”
  
  In the association’s experience, she said, it is rare for people to get divorced because of Alzheimer’s. But Alzheimer’s can go on for years or decades, progressively worsening.
  
  “The decisions people make are personal,” Ms. Kallmyer said.
  
  Dr. Amanda G. Smith, medical director of the Alzheimer’s Institute of the University of South Florida Health, in Tampa, said of Mr. Robertson’s remarks, “I think he was trying to give someone the freedom to move on, but he only took account of the caregiver without taking account of the patient.”
  
  “Even if someone doesn’t recognize a spouse as specifically their spouse, there is often a familiarity with that person and a feeling of comfort, especially if they have been married for decades,” Dr. Smith said.
  
  At the same time, Dr. Smith said, when the disease is advanced, she sees nothing wrong with caregivers developing other relationships “that bring joy and fill a void.” By the same token, she said, “it’s O.K. if a patient in a facility finds a girlfriend to sit with at dinner every night.”
  
  Dr. James E. Galvin, a neurologist who runs a dementia clinic at New York University Langone Medical Center, said it was wrong to say that people with Alzheimer’s were “gone,” or to call its late stages “a kind of death.”
  
  “While it’s true that in terminal phases, patients may not be fully aware of what’s going on, they tend to recognize the people who are closest to them,” Dr. Galvin said.
  
  With good care, people may live 15 to 20 years with the disease, most of that time at home, Dr. Galvin said. If they eventually move to a nursing home and seem unaware of what is going on around them, he said, then spouses face “an individualized decision” about when and how to develop new relationships, ones based on religion and ethics, not science.
  
  Sandra Weintraub, professor of neurology and psychiatry at the Alzheimer’s center of the Northwestern University school of medicine, said that many people develop new relationships while caring for a spouse in the last stages of Alzheimer’s, but that advising them to seek a divorce “strikes me as ludicrous.”
  
  Dr. Weintraub said that someone in Mr. Robertson’s public position should refrain from telling others how to solve such a complex problem.
  
  “Few Christians take Robertson all that seriously anymore,” wrote Mr. Moore, of the Southern Baptist seminary. “Most roll their eyes and shake their heads when he makes another outlandish comment.”
  
  Through a spokesman, Mr. Robertson on Friday declined to elaborate on his televised remarks.

  
  
  [SIZE="5"]TL;DR[/SIZE] -> Guy says that you should divorce your Alzheimer's-striken spouse once they get too bad and don't remember anything, and he received backlash.
  
  What do you think?
  
  Would you divorce or separate from someone if they developed Alzheimer's and were in their later stages, where they don't remember much?
  
  
  Granted, I'd be like 50 or 60 years old for an example like this. So I personally believe that if I've been together with someone for 20 or 30 or 40 years, deciding one day that I can't deal with my spouse's sickness is being a coward, IMO.
  
  Maybe if I were young and I learned that the guy I was dating had cancer, but who the heck am I gonna fall in love with at 50 years old? lmao
  
  I would take care of my significant other. I think that's what love is about, especially after being with them for so long.
  
  
  Relevant:
  
  

  [Image: http://www.givesmehope.com/images/content/60747.jpg]
• Kazuni wrote on 2011-09-18 11:21
  In the later stages it can be so devastating though. That's especially so if you have been married for 40 years or more. If I was married to someone for that long and they didn't recognize me at all, it'd kill me inside every time I looked at them. I don't think I could live with a huge void in the form of a living person next to me, but at the same time, leaving might be equally painful.
  It's one of those situations where you either stay and feel continuous steady pain or cut it all away and hope it gets better.
• EndlessDreams wrote on 2011-09-18 11:38
  Remember that the person without the disease is the one who have to carry all the burden since the person with the disease doesn't know/remember anything at all. I would believe that both leaving and staying are the right thing to do in the situation, assuming that you still going to try to provide care to that person up to a certain point.
  
  That certain point would depend on your financial powers, priorities, and whatever.
• Chockeh wrote on 2011-09-18 11:49
  It would probably kill me inside as well, but at that point, I think that I would love her enough to not care whether she remembers me or not. That last quote you posted is so sweet.
• Claudia wrote on 2011-09-18 12:25
  It would be painful, but it would hurt me more thinking of just leaving them to fend for themselves.
• Phunkie wrote on 2011-09-18 12:30

  Quote from EndlessDreams;590816:

  Remember that the person without the disease is the one who have to carry all the burden since the person with the disease doesn't know/remember anything at all. I would believe that both leaving and staying are the right thing to do in the situation, assuming that you still going to try to provide care to that person up to a certain point.
  
  That certain point would depend on your financial powers, priorities, and whatever.

  
  
  Walking away is just so easy. Like I said, if you recently started dating someone, then sure. But after decades of being married to someone? It's just the easy way out and I don't agree with it.
  
  Of course, I can't speak for every person out there. I just personally would stick with my spouse, especially after doing it for so many years.
• EndlessDreams wrote on 2011-09-18 18:54

  Quote from Phunkie;590854:

  Walking away is just so easy. Like I said, if you recently started dating someone, then sure. But after decades of being married to someone? It's just the easy way out and I don't agree with it.

  
  
  While a person can easily physically walk away, they can't escape from their memories unless they themselves have Alzheimer and/or find some way to completely forget it.
  
  Then again, what do I know? I am not a person who has married for decades, and then have a spouse with Alzheimer. It is much easier for people to just say whatever when they themselves not in the situation.
• Skye wrote on 2011-09-18 19:01

  Quote from Phunkie;590807:

  [Image: http://www.givesmehope.com/images/content/60747.jpg]

  
  
  Oh my god Phunkie, thanks for making me cry. :(
  
  If I've already been with someone for decades, I'm obviously hopelessly in love with him. So there's no way I'd just up and divorce him. That's just disgusting. It's like disowning one of your parents because he/she got Alzheimer's.
  
  Granted, it'd kill me inside everyday.
• starpaw7 wrote on 2011-09-18 22:50
  :gloom2:
  
  

  Quote from Phunkie;590807:

  [Image: http://www.givesmehope.com/images/content/60747.jpg]

  
  
  Oh my god
  
  If that happened to my life-long spouse, that would be a serious stab to the Heart - holy sâ–“t
  
  I'm not going to lie; if we both were very old, and one of us were fatally ill (such as, only months to live), assisted suicide would be an option.
  
  [SPOILER="Spoiler"]By that, the legal side of it - although this only applies to being ill, I would be very tempted to do so (if the other consented)
  
  

  Physician-assisted suicide is legal in some states. For the terminally ill, it is legal in the state of Oregon under the Oregon Death with Dignity Act. In Washington state, it became legal in 2009, when a law modeled after the Oregon act, the Washington Death with Dignity Act was passed. A patient must be diagnosed as having less than six months to live, be of sound mind, make a request orally and in writing, have it approved by two different doctors, then wait 15 days and make the request again. A doctor may prescribe a lethal dose but may not administer it.

  [/SPOILER]
• Cynic wrote on 2011-09-19 02:01
  If you love them enough, you'd stay with them. Otherwise you're basically giving up on them. If you don't love them enough to stay, then you shouldn't really me married to them in the first place.
  
  It's tough as f*ck, but life ain't easy. Nothing worth having is easy to keep or maintain, let alone to get.
• LissaX wrote on 2011-09-20 20:57
  When a spouse has Alzheimer's disease, specialists agree that they need all the adoring assistance they can get. However, as Christian Broadcasting Network chairman Rev. Pat Robertson told “700 Club” viewers Tues, separating from a partner with Alzheimer's is sensible (Pat Robertson says divorcing Alzheimer’s patient is OK). He went on to convey he wouldn't “put a guilt trip” on the non-Alzheimer's spouse, since the disease is “a type of death”. Oh, this is hard. Sometimes a spouse is the only person the Alzheimer person will recognize.
• Zid wrote on 2011-09-21 06:32
  It's painful, but I also would know she didn't mean to put me in pain. It's not her fault, or anybody's fault; it's circumstances out of our control. I love her and she never had any intentions to harm me, so I have no real reason to leave.
  
  Also, what would she do if I did? What would happen to her? The thought of that itself is more painful than staying through the course of agony by memory loss. And that's considering I place great value on memories.
• Adelynn wrote on 2011-09-21 06:59
  Scary thought. To me, memories are what make people who they are. I would at the very least try to stay. Can't stand the thought of abandoning someone who was so kind to me for so long.
• whocares8128 wrote on 2011-09-21 12:27
  Not that I'd condone listening to anything this guy says, but...
  I think people are taking what Robertson said out of context.
  
  From the article in the OP:
  

  “His wife as he knows her is gone,” the caller said, and the friend is “bitter at God for allowing his wife to be in that condition, and now he’s started seeing another woman.”
  
  ...
  
  “I know it sounds cruel,” [Robertson] continued, “but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but to make sure she has custodial care, somebody looking after her.”

  
  
  His concern (and reason for mentioning divorce) seems to be more about not committing adultery. For once I didn't even bother to read the entire article, but in skimming it I found no mention of how long the couple had been together or how old the caller's friend was. Apparently, they already found another potential companion, despite however old they may be.
• TA wrote on 2011-09-23 07:06
  These are just normal average everyday people. To suddenly say you're a messenger of "God" and have a bunch of mindless idiots listen to everything you say, it's just sad.
  
  People really need to learn to think for themselves... You don't need to ask a Preacher, they're just human. Ask yourself, do what you think is best.