My Mother, Your Mother: Embracing "Slow Medicine," the Compassionate Approach to Caring for Your Aging Loved Ones

If you are dealing with an elderly parent with dementia (or other debilitating illness) this is a god-send. Just reading this reduced my stress level greatly and helped me be more patient and tolerant of my 93 yo parent who has mild dementia. Thank you for writing this. I have asked my daughter to read this so she can have these insights when I become old, feeble, etc.

This lovely book is a cross between a manual on caring for elderly loved ones and the gripping story of the author's mother as she went from the "Everything's fine" stage to health crises and decline to her death.

McCollough's chapters on the ER, the hospital, and rehabilitation facilities are envaluable guides for navigating chaotic and dangerous waters. He is so balanced and has deep understanding of the layperson's challenges in dealing with the medical system and medical personel.

I love the term he coined, "slow medicine" to show that time and kindness can serve old people better than rapid-response medical interventions. "Holistic" does not adequately describe alternatives to allopathic medicine. Perhaps "Slow Medicine," with its tip of the hat to the popular Slow Food movement in Europe, will become the medical approach of choice, for not just the elderly but for anyone with chronic or degenerative illnesses.

Anyone caring for elderly people could benefit greatly from this sensible, wise, and compassionate book.

Nancy Manahan, author of Living Consciously, Dying Gracefully: A Journey with Cancer and Beyond, www.nanbec.com

Highly recommend this book for anyone dealing with an aging parent. It is very comprehensive yet well organized into the different stages of "decline", and user friendly. I have found it to be a great comfort and a good resource in dealing with my 82 year old mother who is in the beginning stages of senile dementia and is having a difficult time understanding that she can no longer live safely in her own home.

I found this book helpful and sensitive on a subject near to my heart. I learned some things I'm doing right and things I can do better. Also am better prepared for the future. I wish the author were my mother's doctor!

I bought this book at the recommendation of someone else and was very disappointed in its superficiality. Anyone with a modicum of common sense could figure out on her own how to handle the problems raised in this book. I've been working through the process of aging with my own parents and found nothing new here to help me. I thought the author was, at times, quite patronizing. I'm not sure who his intended audience was, but it was not me. AKA Cooper