[benatkin]

Irrespective of whether you think the most of the years of her being in a nursing home are a waste, the entirety of it is a touching story to me. Society has prescribed keeping her alive by tending to the extensive requirements in order for her to stay alive (such as helping her swallow and sit up and get around), and the author and his daughter are making the best of it. Reading the book and telling his story are not keeping her alive and making her suffer longer, being in the nursing home likely is. So IMO it can only help, not hurt. He isn't putting forth the argument that his love poem practice has helped her up to this day, but that it at least helped her early on in the progression of Alzheimer's, and I think it did help her early on in Alzheimer's because I think she still had capacity to experience life for some time after her diagnosis. I also think it is a good father-daughter experience, given the circumstances. I think he leaves it an open question as to whether it was helping her in the later stages of it, or if Alzheimer's is nothing but an utter shitshow at this point, so while I see how the article pours salt on wounds, I'm not going to fault the author for it.