Patricia Herrscher, 53, a former Parisian interior designer, dropped everything three years ago to take care of her father, who has Alzheimer’s disease, in a small village in Perche. Nothing prepared her to become a “helper”, a full-time job for which there is no real training.
In this document from the magazine “1:15 p.m. on Saturday” (Twitter, #1:15 p.m.), signed Vincent Nguyen, Jean-Charles Guichard, Mathieu Parmentier, she reveals her daily life, the intimacy of her special relationship with Michel, “Grandpa”, as she calls it, and delivers a rare, touching, poetic and even funny account of the experience that changed her life.
Enter his world
Patricia has learned from her mistakes on her own, and is still adapting day by day to the progression of the disease… which has slowed down since Michel left the retirement home to live with his daughter. After struggling to bring her mind back to the world of logic, she finally decided to enter her own, that of fantasy, poetry…
Patricia has understood that fighting this incurable disease, which concerns 3 million French people, sick and close, is useless and painful. Accepting it and living with it, even playing with it, paradoxically makes it possible to delay its effects. Patricia shares her daily life because she wants “helping caregivers”often helpless in the face of this disease.
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