My Story of Walking with Alzheimer's

January 13, 2015
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley

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Guest Information

Episode Description

Mark Telego’s experience of family caregiving for his mother began after his father died. She’d lived with insulin dependent diabetes for 45 years, and with what for 9 years seemed to be Alzheimer's disease. He published his website, http://www.eyes-n-ears.net, in Dec 2013, 14 months after her death. He talks about his life, career, and family caregiving. He explains his work on documentary and video films and his website. He explains Quality of Life and the challenges to Quality of Life experienced by family caregivers and their family members living with Alzheimer’s disease. He discusses ways for family caregivers to overcome these challenges for themselves and their family members. He says what more he would like to do and see done, and by whom, to promote Quality of Life for family caregivers and their family members living with Alzheimer’s disease. He shares his message for family caregivers who have just recognized that their loved one is likely living with Alzheimer’s disease.

Family Caregivers Unite!

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Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.

Dr. Gordon Atherley

Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.

Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.



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