Short Story Babysitting Helen

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Researching Alzheimer 's There are times when research is everything to understand a story. For example, you could research Alzheimer 's after reading the story "Babysitting Helen". At most people know Alzheimer 's is a physical disease that damages the brain and causes a daily struggle for the victim and their family as well. "Babysitting Helen" is about a teenage girl who has to watch Helen who is a victim of Alzheimer 's. But if you didn’t know anything about Alzheimer 's and if you didn’t research then you wouldn 't understand anything about the short story. Which brings me to how my research on dementia helped broaden my understanding on the short story "Babysitting Helen". It increased my knowledge the most in these three categories, the daily life affected, the symptoms of Alzheimer 's, and the struggles on the family. In the short story you can see the Alzheimer 's victim, Helen, was always being watched and always being taken care of. I now know why she was always on watch. As we can assume Barb is the caregiver for her mother and whenever she goes out she has to find someone to watch Helen. We can tell because the story blatantly states "Barb Stanley needs someone to stay with Helen for a few hours"(Stinson ,300). At first I was thinking why the daughter needed to get their mother a sitter mostly because it is usually the other way around. I though it was just because she is an older lady and needed someone to take care of them just like