By Barbara Drake-Vera, Gainesville, Florida, USA
We are all bound in a circle of caregiving — to one another and to our fragile planet. That is the lesson I share in my new memoir.
In January 2011, my life turned upside down when my 86-year-old widowed father in Florida was diagnosed with advancing Alzheimer’s.
I was 49 years old and living in Peru, where I was helping to cover the story of melting Andean glaciers for NBC News and other US news outlets. I had a husband and young son. We had a full life — far from the reach of my father, who had abused me emotionally as a child and spurned me for becoming a writer, going so far as to disown me in my 20s.
Yet, learning of my father’s devastating disease, my Peruvian-born husband made a surprising offer: “Let’s bring your father to live with us in Lima.”
Thus began our “Peruvian Alzheimer’s Adventure,” as I called it, a journey of unexpected personal and family healing that I recount in Melted Away: A Memoir of Climate Change and Caregiving in Peru, new from LSU Press.
One reason I wrote Melted Away was to showcase the positive differences in caring for someone with dementia in South America compared to the United States. Thanks to the favorable exchange rate in Peru, we were able to get personalized, round-the-clock care for about US $1,500 a month. That covered two trained home-health aides; at-home visits and treatments by an English-speaking geriatrician and a neurologist; and medications. Later we transferred my father to a private dementia-care home nearby for about the same amount.
Having that personalized level of care relieved me of much of the physical burden of caregiving, for which I was grateful. Admittedly, it took a bit of searching (and some high drama) to find the right care team, as I describe in the most intense caregiving chapter, “Forty-two Days.”
But the benefits weren’t just financial. My father’s immersion in Lima’s warm, people-centered culture (as exemplified by his aides) gradually thawed his habitual bitterness and aloofness, and he finally was treated for the depression that had dogged him his whole life. In his final year, my once-solitary father was laughing, had made a circle of neighborhood friends and was even learning beginning Spanish — with mid-stage Alzheimer’s. Yes, change can happen when you least expect it.
I was also motivated to relate, as candidly as possible, what it is like to care for an abusive parent with dementia. There are few memoirs about this topic, and I wanted to light the path for others who are navigating this rough emotional terrain. When my father first arrived in Lima, I was anxious that I would regress to the fearful, soul-crushing state that had consumed me as a child; simultaneously, I entertained unrealistic fantasies that my father would finally apologize for his past wrongs. Overseeing his care aroused the best and occasionally the worst in me. But being in close contact with him day in and day out, after years of separation, enabled me to finally see him as the flawed, vulnerable man he was, not the monster I had imagined as a child. Gaining that perspective set me free.
Our “Peruvian Alzheimer’s Adventure” also left a mark on environmental reporting and advocacy. Caring for one another and for the planet are intertwined, I realized. The highest work we can do is to be there for others in times of crisis. All that is required is to learn to give of ourselves “con cariño” – with loving affection, as they say in Spanish.
Purchase Melted Away: A Memoir of Climate Change and Caregiving in Peru
About Barbara Drake-Vera
Barbara Drake-Vera is an award-winning fiction writer and journalist from Gainesville, Florida, and a former ambassador for the Alzheimer’s Association. Her honors include an Individual Fellowship in Fiction from the State of Florida and a grant from the Miami-Dade Cultural Council. She holds an MFA from the University of Florida, where she worked and taught for 10 years.
While living in Peru from 2007 to 2014, Barbara worked as a field producer for NBC Nightly News and the TODAY Show, assisting with coverage of the environment and breaking news. In 2011, she brought her estranged father with Alzheimer’s to live with her family in Lima, which became the subject of a new memoir, Melted Away. Her unusual caregiving journey abroad has been showcased on Health Central.com, Minding Our Elders, and the Fading Memories podcast. She is featured in an upcoming PBS special on eco-grief in Florida, set to air in February 2025.
Connect with Barbara Drake-Vera
About the Moderators
About the Podcast
AlzAuthors is the global community of authors writing about Alzheimer’s and dementia from personal experience to light the way for others.
Our podcast introduces you to our authors who share their stories and insights to provide knowledge, comfort, and support. Please subscribe so you don’t miss a word. If our authors’ stories move you, please leave a review. And don’t forget to share our podcast with family and friends on their own dementia journeys.
We are a 501(c)(3) charitable organization totally reliant on donations to do what we do. Your generosity will help cover our many operating costs, which include website hosting and maintenance fees, service charges to keep things running smoothly, and marketing expenses to promote our authors, expand our content, improve our reach, and more. Our ongoing work supports our mission to lift the silence and stigma of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. To sustain our efforts please donate here.
Ideas and opinions expressed in this podcast belong to the speakers and not AlzAuthors. Always consult your healthcare provider and legal and financial consultants for advice on any of the topics covered here.
Thanks for listening.
We are a Whole Care Network Featured Podcast
Proud to be on The Health Podcast Network
Find us on The World Podcast Network and babyboomer.org
Want to be on the podcast? Here’s what you need to know
We’ve got merch! Shop our Store
