I don’t watch The Dr. Oz Show. I know who he is and could pick him out of a line up, but I know very little about him beyond the fact that he is an Oprah protégé celebrity. I do know that he’s come under scrutiny for some of his medical advice and that that has soured many people on him.
However, Dr. Mehmet Oz is a human and I just learned that his father died in February. And on his show yesterday, he revealed that his mother, Suna Oz, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Oz confessed that in addition to all the other emotions he has about his mom’s diagnosis, he feels terrifically guilty because he, “completely missed the signs.”
The host of The Dr. Oz Show, 59, says that he is “frustrated and mad” at himself for not recognizing that his 81-year-old mother’s health was failing.
“I’m feeling guilty because I completely missed the signs until fairly late in the process,” Oz tells PEOPLE.
Oz, whose father died in February, says that he and his two sisters noticed different irregularities in their mom’s actions — Oz saw that she was struggling to find her words, while his sister thought she was dressing oddly. But the siblings did not put the signs together.
“If the right word was, ‘You look beautiful today,’ she would use, ‘You look pretty prettier today.’ I missed those clues,” he says. “Alzheimer’s is like a snake in the grass. You don’t see it. You only see the effects of it suddenly. And if there’s a wind blowing the grass, you don’t even notice the grass moving strangely. It sneaks up on you.”
Oz says they started to realize that something was wrong because Suna, who was already stubborn, started becoming irrational.
“The stubbornness transitioned from just her being an opinionated person to, ‘Hey, that’s dangerous medically. I can’t let you do that,’” he says.
The family took Suna for testing, and doctors confirmed the Alzheimer’s diagnosis. She is now living in Turkey, her home country, under the care of Oz’s sister. He says it has been difficult to see Suna struggle with her memories.
Oz says the mom that has been there for him throughout his life is disappearing.
“These are not normal things from my mom. And that’s the most painful part of this whole process because I end up losing my mom twice,” he says. “The woman that I love whose bright eyes were there for every experience I’ve ever had as a child — those eyes are starting to dim. The light that that made her who she was is starting to go out.”
Oz’s guest for his discussion was Maria Shriver, whose father suffered from Alzheimer’s, and who is a huge advocate on Alzheimer’s awareness, especially in women. In the clips I saw, Maria seemed to assume the interviewer role, which allowed Oz to speak as a son rather than a host. Maria knew exactly what and how to ask the questions that made it informative but still personal and moving. Oz suggested that he had all the signs it was Alzheimer’s but that “wishful thinking” kept him from going there. I can’t fault him for this, it’s extremely hard to see the forest from the trees when it’s someone you love. Unfortunately, the most he or anyone could do, even had they known prior, is delay it. He also revealed that he has since learned he that he carries one of the genes for Alzheimer’s.
Marcia Gay Harden said something similar about watching her mother disappear after her mom’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. It sounds so sad. My heart goes out to the whole Oz family.
Photo credit: WENN Photos and Getty Images
I’ve had relatives affected by Alzheimer’s and I still really don’t want to see this snake oil salesman covered here, for whatever that’s worth. This isn’t something I would wish on anyone but I also don’t want to give him any clicks or coverage whatsoever (of course me commenting isn’t helping, but still).
While I have sympathy for anyone dealing with that kind of diagnosis with a family member…. I can’t help but wonder how he’d feel if someone started trying to sell them some BS holistic treatment with no real studies or proof of any kind.
My husband had early onset Alzheimer’s, a twelve year journey from diagnosis to death. It’s a horrible disease, for the patient and the family. I’ve always considered Oz a quack, but I feel for him, his sisters, his mother.
I am so sorry. Alzheimer’s is a terrible disease and not only hard on the patient, it is devastatingly brutal to the caregivers. My heart goes out to you Jerusha.
He has publicly declared he is pro-vaccination.
Dr. Oz is a quack, first and foremost, see green coffee bean extract, and raspberry ketone..
He has done so much to ruin people’s health, including his negative stance on vaccines, and is continuing to do so, even now, as he thinks taking Omega 3 oil supplements will delay an onset of Alzheimer’s for him personally. I don’t think this will be a wake-up call for him to stop peddling his dangerous snake oil cures.
Yep! He missed the signs because he has forego all formal physician training decades ago. And because you should never try to act as a MD to your relatives, family is often pretty blind to a person’s decline. I can’t with the BS he’s promoting and profiting from on a daily basis (alongside with the guilt-tripping if you ever get sick: “you didn’t have a pinch of himalayan salt with your omega3 and that’s why you got cancer Janet”). Alzheimer sucks but he’s the last person who should be talking about it
I have sympathy for anyone losing a loved one this way, but my deepest sympathy is for the caretakers. Sure, Dr. Oz loves his mother, but it is his sister who has the biggest burden. It also doesn’t surprise me that he missed the diagnosis, because I really don’t consider him a doctor. I hope he will make sure that both his mother and his sister have all the support that they need.
It generally takes a year to get an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. The neurologist will order a PET scan as a benchmark, then another one year later. If the scans show deterioration in the Alzheimer’s affected areas, then the diagnosis is made. That is also the point where the doctors take away the patient’s drivers license. If he was “surprised” at the diagnosis, was he not paying attention when it was a viable hypothesis a year ago? Or has he been holding in the “surprise” until the official diagnosis. If she lives in another country, I can see that maybe because he wasn’t with her or speaking to her frequently, that he didn’t pick up on it, but the signs are there. We are four years in to my mom’s diagnosis and it sucks. My dad is her caretaker and he is getting really depressed, yet he refuses to get help (for both of them) through community programs or day-care situations. He’s a Boomer and stoic and just takes a “stiff upper lip” approach to the whole thing. I’m thankful he’s so devoted to her, but he needs a break and she needs to talk to people and be out of the house. I feel like I’m losing both of them and it’s awful.
Dr. Oz is a quack. I feel sorry for his mother.
Dr. Oz is an ass, but what he said about his mother made me burst into tears at my desk at work. I have no personal experience with dealing with Alzheimers, thankfully, but what a sad picture he painted.