Dementia Memoir

The Last Ocean is Gerrard’s investigation into what dementia does to both the person who lives with the condition and to their caregivers. Dementia is now one of the leading causes of death in the West, and this necessary book will offer both comfort and a map to those walking through it. While she begins with her father’s long slip into forgetting, Gerrard expands to examine dementia writ large. Gerrard gives raw but literary shape both to the unimaginable loss of one’s own faculties, as well as to the pain of their loved ones.

From the challenges of navigating disorientation to the moments when guilt and resentments creep in, listeners are guided gently through slow-burning grief. Along the way, Davis shares how her own fractured family came together, and how her father revealed his true self - always kind, even when he couldn't recognize his own daughter. The result is an achingly beautiful work on the fragile human condition from a profoundly wise and empathetic writer.

In Remembering the Music, Forgetting the Words, Kate Whouley strips away the romantic veneer of mother-daughter love to bare the toothed and tough reality of caring for a parent who is slowly losing her mind. Yet, this is not a dark or dour look at the demon of Alzheimer’s. Whouley shares the trying, the tender, and the sometimes hilarious moments in meeting the challenge also known as Mom.

In the fall of 1988, Sue Miller found herself caring for her father as he slipped into the grasp of Alzheimer's disease. She was, she claims, perhaps the least constitutionally suited of all her siblings to be in the role in which she suddenly found herself, and in The Story of My Father she grapples with the haunting memories of those final months and the larger narrative of her father's life.

Dealing with Early-Onset Alzheimer’s: Love, Laughter & Tears is Sonia Discher’s heartbreaking but empowering story of caring for her husband, Steve. The story follows Steve’s diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s at age 50 through treatment, care, and his passing. Sonia provides a look behind the curtain of this terrible sickness to reveal a treasure trove of tips and tricks she used to understand the disease, advocate for her husband, care for her family, and preserve her sanity throughout a confusing and sad time.

Regarded as one of the finest journalists of her generation, Mamie Baird Magnusson's whole life was a celebration of words - words that she fought to retain in the grip of a disease which is fast becoming the scourge of the 21st century. Married to writer and broadcaster Magnus Magnusson, they had five children of whom Sally is the eldest.

At first, Simon’s beloved father, Ted, suffered sudden bad moods and forgetfulness. Then the diagnosis: Alzheimer’s. Ted was disappearing from the family, but Simon wanted to hold on to him. While music could bring him back temporarily - the video of the two of them singing along to Ted’s favorite song was a hit around the world - Ted could no longer tell his story. This is that story.

At the age of 53, Tony walks away from a life of journalism and into an unknown future dogged by self-doubt and financial worry. June is 48 years old then, a writer and a teacher, and over the following nine years she watches as her husband gradually changes - in interests, goals, and behavior - until Tony has a sudden fall, ending their life as they have known it.

As a child, Maggie Downs often doubted that she would ever possess the courage to visit the destinations her mother dreamed of one day seeing. "You are braver than you think," her mother always insisted. That statement would guide her as, over the course of one year, Downs backpacked through seventeen countries - visiting all the places her mother, struck with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, could not visit herself - encountering some of the world's most striking locales while confronting the slow loss of her mother.

Kim Campbell was a fresh-faced 22-year-old dancer at Radio City Music Hall when a friend introduced her to Glen Campbell, the chart-topping, Grammy-winning, Oscar-nominated entertainer. The two performers from small Southern towns quickly fell in love, a bond that produced a 34-year marriage and three children. In Gentle on My Mind, Kim tells the complete, no-holds-barred story of their relationship, recounting the highest of highs - award shows, acclaimed performances, the birth of their children, encounters with Mick Fleetwood, Waylon Jennings, and others.

From New York Times best-selling author, Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist, and leading Alzheimer's advocate Meryl Comer comes a profoundly intimate account of her husband's battle with Alzheimer's disease, one of today's most pressing - and least understood - health epidemics.

Jamie Tyrone was 49 years old when she learned she had a 91% chance of getting Alzheimer's disease - by accident through genetic testing. She was shocked, but after an initial bout with depression she decided to take action rather than concede defeat. Jamie teamed up with Dr. Marwan Sabbagh, a renowned neurologist, and together they created a resource detailing not just Jamie's experience, but expert medical advice for anyone facing the disease.

Based on the "field notes" she keeps in her journal, Memory's Last Breath is Gerda Saunders' astonishing window into a life distorted by dementia. She writes about shopping trips cut short by unintentional shoplifting, car journeys derailed when she loses her bearings, and the embarrassment of forgetting what she has just said to a room of colleagues. Coping with the complications of losing short-term memory, Saunders, a former university professor, nonetheless embarks on a personal investigation of the brain and its mysteries, examining science and literature.

While fighting an aggressive brain tumor, Deirdre must care for her mother with advanced Alzheimer’s, raise her teenage daughter, and help her husband chase a new dream - opening a barbecue restaurant. Her greatest defense is her sense of humor in this tender memoir chronicling life struggles that are often tragic - but can still be very funny. Grab a tissue and take a ride as one batty broad battles her way through the tragicomic trials of her most perilous adventure yet - brain cancer.

The Memory Chalet is a memoir unlike any you have ever experienced before. Each essay charts some experience or remembrance of the past through the sieve of Tony Judt's prodigious mind.

An estimated 50 million people in the world suffer from dementia. Diseases such as Alzheimer’s erase parts of one’s memory but are also often said to erase the self. People don’t simply die from such diseases; they are imagined, in the clichés of our era, as vanishing in plain sight, fading away, or enduring a long goodbye. In On Vanishing, Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain, investigates the myths and metaphors surrounding dementia and aging....

On a family vacation in 2009, Dr. Renée Brown Harmon felt the first jolt of fear that something might be wrong. How could her husband, Harvey, a highly intelligent physician, marathon runner, and devoted father, be struggling to keep up with their guide’s simple instructions or unable to do simple math to calculate their daughter’s age? The heartbreaking truth was confirmed nine months later when he was diagnosed with younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease at age fifty.

In this highly personal account, Dr Gibbs documents the effect his diagnosis has had on his life and explains his advocacy for improving early recognition of Alzheimer’s. Weaving clinical knowledge from decades caring for dementia patients with his personal experience of the disease, this is an optimistic tale of one man’s journey with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

Happily married and running a successful business, Peter Berry's life changed when, at the age of 50, he was given a terminal diagnosis of early-onset dementia. Since that day, he has learned to live with his very own 'dementia monster'. From depression and suicide attempts through to his determination to confront his dementia, Peter has embarked on a series of challenges to show that 'life isn't over with dementia, it's just a little different'.

Throughout her childhood in Detroit, Damian Rogers was never given a satisfactory account of the circumstances that led to her own birth. The "truth" behind the stories she was told by her mother - the free-spirited, beautiful, and troubled Joanna - constantly shifted, and Damian was left only with fragments: her mom's trip to California in 1969 after finishing high school, a mysterious trauma and psychotic break, then a return to Detroit, pregnant.