'The eyes of others’ are what really matters: The experience of living with dementia from an insider perspective

Introduction This Dutch study is a qualitative interview study. It aims to contribute to our understanding of the day-to-day experiences by providing an idiographic description of what it means existentially to be in the world as a person affected by a form of dementia, taking into account the contextual nature of these embodied experiences. Methods We used a combination of narrative accounts of people from dementia. We first collected 322 recorded messages of 16 diarists who joined the Dutch Dementia Diaries project. This data was supplemented with 37 interview accounts. Our data analysis was inspired by Van Manen's existential phenomenological approach. Results The findings show that living with dementia-from a first-person perspective-can be understood as a severely unsettling experience: the people concerned enter a very uncertain, unpredictable and ambiguous period of life. They have to face all kinds of losses that considerably change and disrupt their relationships with 1) their own body, 2) with others and 3) with the surrounding world. This experience is explicated in the following themes: la) scrutinizing your disrupted body; 1b) trying to control your bodily loss-of-control; 2a) feeling scrutinized by the suspicious gaze of others; 2b) drifting away from significant others; 2c) having difficulties sharing the struggle; 2d) longing to be taken seriously; 2e) engaging in a world of peers; and 3a) sensing disorientation in an alien place; 3b) feeling closed in within a shrinking space; 3c) trying to control a dreaded future; 3d) trying to control a dreaded future by means of euthanasia. Discussion Our study demonstrates how the people with dementia are affected by 'the eyes of others'. They longed for a safe and accepting environment, but quite often felt scrutinized by inquisitive and disapproving looks. The outcomes also reveal a connection between dominant social imaginaries and people's self-understanding of dementia. Much of the suffering stems from living under the shadow of negative imaginaries. Furthermore, our study supports the demand for a socio-relational approach by demonstrating that-from a first-person perspective-dementia can be seen a disorder that is related in particular to questions about self-hood, social relations and social roles. For the people involved, instead of what dementia is, the focus is on what Alzheimer's disease means and does and how it affects daily life

Resummation of the Divergent Perturbation Series for a Hydrogen Atom in an Electric Field

We consider the resummation of the perturbation series describing the energy displacement of a hydrogenic bound state in an electric field (known as the Stark effect or the LoSurdo-Stark effect), which constitutes a divergent formal power series in the electric field strength. The perturbation series exhibits a rich singularity structure in the Borel plane. Resummation methods are presented which appear to lead to consistent results even in problematic cases where isolated singularities or branch cuts are present on the positive and negative real axis in the Borel plane. Two resummation prescriptions are compared: (i) a variant of the Borel-Pade resummation method, with an additional improvement due to utilization of the leading renormalon poles (for a comprehensive discussion of renormalons see [M. Beneke, Phys. Rep. vol. 317, p. 1 (1999)]), and (ii) a contour-improved combination of the Borel method with an analytic continuation by conformal mapping, and Pade approximations in the conformal variable. The singularity structure in the case of the LoSurdo-Stark effect in the complex Borel plane is shown to be similar to (divergent) perturbative expansions in quantum chromodynamics.Comment: 14 pages, RevTeX, 3 tables, 1 figure; numerical accuracy of results enhanced; one section and one appendix added and some minor changes and additions; to appear in phys. rev.

QED Effective Action Revisited

The derivation of a convergent series representation for the quantum electrodynamic effective action obtained by two of us (S.R.V. and D.R.L.) in [Can. J. Phys. vol. 71, p. 389 (1993)] is reexamined. We present more details of our original derivation. Moreover, we discuss the relation of the electric-magnetic duality to the integral representation for the effective action, and we consider the application of nonlinear convergence acceleration techniques which permit the efficient and reliable numerical evaluation of the quantum correction to the Maxwell Lagrangian.Comment: 20 pages, LaTeX, 1 table; minor additions and adjustments; to appear in Can. J. Phy

Qualitative Interviewing of Older Persons

Interviewing older persons requires specific attention to a number of age-related issues. These may include changes in cognitive processes, hearing and seeing impairments, and other health issues but also a different pace of life or increased tiredness. In addition, older persons have a lifetime of experience from which they can draw. Paying careful attention to these aspects when interviewing older persons can increase rapport and trust and consequently enhance the depth of these interviews. This entry outlines some ways in which interviewers can accomplish such depth. Instead of focusing on general methodological interview procedures and skills, this entry focuses on the more subtle level of views, attitude, and reflective openness