JOAN’S BLOG – WED/THUR, OCTOBER 27/28, 2010 – MAKING PURPLE THE NEW PINK

If you have been out ANYWHERE during the month of October, you have been surrounded by PINK. Every single store I entered from grocery to clothing had a PINK promotion to raise awareness and money for breast cancer. There were specially made pink products from duffel bags to water bottles to soup cans, whose sale proceeds were going to breast cancer research and programs. Store employees were dressed in pink t-shirts, wearing pink ribbons , with pink bows in their hair. Celebrities were on TV asking us to buy the t-shirts or hats they were wearing, the proceeds going to breast cancer. We are saving the pink lids from yogurt to send to Dannon, the company that has promised to donate a certain amount of money from their sales to breast cancer. October’s breast cancer awareness program is the most visible fundraising and awareness campaign I have ever seen. You absolutely cannot be breathing and not be aware of the PINK.

In five days, it will be November. Did you know that November is Alzheimer’s Awareness month? There are awareness raising programs planned around the world. Although I am not aware of all of the programs, campaigns, or activities planned, I am pretty sure the general public will not be as bathed in the Alzheimer color PURPLE in November as it was in breast cancer PINK during October. It has been my experience that no matter how many celebrities         are on TV telling us about Alzheimer’s Disease, the general public and general medical community remain ignorant about the nature of Alzheimer’s Disease. The general public does not seem to care, unless someone in their family has the disease, and the general medical community is stubbornly holding onto the outdated notion that it is an inevitable disease of the elderly.

Awareness raising of ANY disease goes back to the question I asked in September on Alzheimer’s Awareness DAY – Why should anyone care? Why should anyone learn about ANY particular disease? For breast cancer, the answer is simple. Everyone knows that cancer kills, but can be cured in many cases with early detection. Almost everyone has been touched by breast cancer in their families. Everyone knows that breast cancer can strike any woman at any age. Everyone knows that with research have come better detection, treatments, and cures.

But with Alzheimer’s Disease, almost everyone not directly involved with the disease thinks, as does the general medical community mentioned above, that it is an inevitable disease of the elderly. The patient will forget things. He/she will forget names; people; and how to take care of themselves. They will have to go to a nursing home. Old=Alzheimer’s Disease. No one seems to want to learn anything more about it. Is it because they think it only affects old people, and if someone is that old, they are going to die anyway?

What I do know is that we are never going to find a cure; never going to find better treatments; never going to have funding for in-home care; never going to have resources and activities for early stage patients; and never going to have respite funding unless we get out there and raise awareness ourselves. As long as DOCTORS are ignorant about the disease, how can we expect the general public to be knowledgeable?

How can we make PURPLE the new PINK? How can we get companies to invest as much in Alzheimer’s research and awareness as they have in breast cancer?  I am not asking these questions rhetorically. I am asking for practical suggestions.

Please post ideas on the MESSAGE BOARD TOPIC: Making Purple the New Pink.

For the printable handout - Dispelling the Myths of Alzheimer's Disease, CLICK HERE.

For AD awareness products, CLICK HERE.

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The Alzheimer Spouse LLC
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