Help for Judith Anderson

In 2019 Our good Friend, Judith Anderson, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. We all miss her former self. Many of us in Tucson know her as a massage therapist. She taught the Massage For People with AIDS program at the Desert Institute, and ran the evening massage clinic. She was generous with her time and devoted her entire massage practice to tend to people with AIDS. And that was during a time when many people were fearful of being around people with this disease. She opened new opportunities for students and taught them how to care for this population. Now, she needs our help so she can continue to receive the help she needs for her Alzheimer’s.

In the late fall of 2019, she moved into a memory care/assisted living facility with her dog, Mose. She is very happy living there and has nothing but nice things to say about the staff and residences. Although the monthly fee is very reasonable, it is greater than her monthly income, so she is in immediate danger of being evicted. As the disease progresses her level of care will increase along with the fees associated with it. She is becoming painfully forgetful and recently self-neglectful. She needs the kind of supervision that she receives where she is living.

Her friends are helping her to complete the application for financial assistance from Arizona Long Term Care. While we are hopeful, we really don’t know if she will qualify as those funds are for people who are non-ambulatory or not able to feed and bathe themselves. Judith is ambulatory and can feed herself, needing daily assistance for such things as taking medications, appointment reminders, etc. So, there may be a long-term need of financial help until her condition worsens.

Some of you may remember Judith as brilliant editor. She was editor-in-chief of the Cousteau Society’s Journal, and a copy editor of the New York Times . She has lived and travelled around the world. She served her Tucson community for several years in Ward 3 as neighborhood liaison for council woman Karen Ulhich. She has always been a smart, funny, widely read, cultured woman and an exceptional generous friend for us all. Please pass on this GO FUND ME request to your Face Book Friends and Family.

 

Margaret Avery Moon, Patricia Holland, and Kathy Rinn