Guest Blogger
Max Wallack
Max Wallack is a 16 year old college sophomore at Boston University. From the age of 6 through 10, he was a caregiver to his great grandmother who lived with his family. After her death in 2008, he founded a nonprofit organization, PuzzlesTo Remember, that has distributed over 19,300 puzzles to over 1700 Alzheimer’s facilities around the world.
Max is also an editor on the AlzheimersReadingRoom.com, where he provides information and advice to Alzheimer’s caregivers.
At Boston University, Max is a neuroscience major, planning to pursue a career in Geriatric Psychiatry. He volunteers 20 hours a week in the Molecular Psychiatry and Aging Laboratory at Boston University School of Medicine, where he studies various enzymes involved in Alzheimer’s disease, under the mentorship of Dr. Wendy Qiu.
Max will be presenting his research at the 2013 American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry’s annual conference.
For more from Max visit:
PuzzlesToRemember
AlzheimersReadingRoom.com
Max's Facebook Page
Puzzles To Remember's Facebook Page
Becoming an Alzheimer’s Researcher: My Journey
Becoming an Alzheimer’s Researcher: My Journey In 2009, someone at the Build a Bear Workshop heard about my project and invited me to apply to become one of their huggable heroes. As a Huggable Hero, I was invited to St. Louis for an amazing experience. That’s where I met some very inspirational young people, many [...]
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Teaching a Child to Give
When I was very young I was invited to participate in a Davidson Young Scholar conference at Lake Tahoe. There were about 20 Davidson Young Scholars and their families at the event. We stayed in a hotel up in Tahoe. I remember the sign as we entered the hotel building, “Don’t leave the doors open. [...]
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Changing the World for Alzheimer’s Patients
Because my family kept Great Grams at home with us, instead of in a nursing home, I was confronted daily with her needs. I kept thinking about and reading about Alzheimer’s disease. It was becoming clearer and clearer to me that I wanted to spend my life helping Alzheimer’s patients and their caregivers. From age [...]
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Putting Smiles on Their Faces: Puzzles to Remember
During the last year of her life, my great grandmother spent time going in and out of several hospital dementia wards, most often for the urinary tract infections that so often accompany incontinence. Upon visiting her in these settings, I noticed that patients who were working on jigsaw puzzles seemed calmer than their frequently agitated [...]
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From Child to Caregiver
I was still very young when I first decided to pursue a career in medicine. My early experiences helped me grasp the importance of what I might accomplish if I could succeed at practicing medicine with compassion. I can still recall, at the age of nine, with sleepy eyes, taking my post for the night. [...]
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