Dementia Memoir

Many know Kimberly Williams-Paisley as the bride in the popular Steve Martin remakes of the Father of the Bride movies, the calculating Peggy Kenter on Nashville, or the wife of country megastar Brad Paisley. But in 2014, Williams-Paisley revealed a tragic secret: Her mother had been diagnosed with a rare form of dementia called primary progressive aphasia at the age of 61.

“These pages will be a blessing to families dealing with Alzheimer’s. Sandeep Jauhar’s prose is insightful, honest, and moving about a condition that most of us will inevitably encounter in our lifetimes." —Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone A deeply affecting memoir of a...

Providing dementia care is profoundly stressful for families and caregivers. People with dementia or Alzheimer’s experience emotional distress, which leads to behavioral complications and the need for institutional care. However, if families and caregivers are able to identify the emotional needs caused by dementia and understand which skills are lost and which remain, they can lower the behavioral complications and their own stress.

Read by the author. In My Two Elaines, author Marty Schreiber, former governor of Wisconsin, watches his beloved wife, Elaine, gradually transform from the woman he fell in love with in high school, and who diligently supported his political career, to the Elaine who knows she is declining and...

Pat Summitt, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history and bestselling author of Reach for the Summitt and Raise The Roof, tells for the first time her remarkable story of victory and resilience as well as facing down her greatest challenge: early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Pat...

My Disappearing Mother: A Memoir of Magic and Loss is far more than a memoir on the devastation that comes with dementia, a cognitive impairment that affects fifty-five million people worldwide. Finnamore beautifully chronicles her mother's rich and varied life journey, from her birth in Puerto Rico during the height of the Depression to ferrying to the United States, in hopes of a better life. On U.S. soil, her mother, Bunny, started working as a performer for enlisted men, then became a secretary, and eventually a professional clairvoyant.

Your loved one’s Dementia impairs her ability to think, reason, and remember. Patients no longer recognize reality and often engage in difficult, irrational, and sometimes dangerous behavior.

From the seven health conditions that are often mistaken for Dementia to understanding what causes neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s, Dementia Must-Knows is the only caregiver’s guide to early-stage dementia you need.

“A brave and illuminating journey inside the mind, heart, and life of a person with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.”—Lisa Genova, author of Still Alice Wendy Mitchell had a busy job with the British National Health Service, raised her two daughters alone, and spent her weekends running...

What happened to the kind, lighthearted gentleman whose strong faith had grounded him for eighty years? When I was growing up, Dad was a playful, happy man who enjoyed bringing pleasure to his loved ones. Constructing a skating rink in the barnyard, planning trailer trips to Disneyland or Montana, building a wakeboard to tow us behind his boat were gifts. Hard-working and ingenious, his whimsy disguised the changes taking place. Dads mission to protect and care for others, while seeking his childhood dream of owning a farm, triggered a slow slide into the current of dementia.

The Long Hello distills the seven years the author spent caring for her mother into a pause-resisting memoir that offers insight into the "altering world of the dementia mind". During that time Borrie recorded brief conversations she had with her mother that revealed the transformations within - and sometimes yielded an almost Zen-like poetry. She includes selections from them in chapters about her experience that are as evocative as diary entries.

The creator of Deadwood and NYPD Blue reflects on his tumultuous life, driven by a nearly insatiable creative energy and a matching penchant for self-destruction. Life’s Work is a profound memoir from a brilliant mind taking stock as Alzheimer’s loosens his hold on his own past. “This is...

Samantha Irby meets Bettyville in this darkly funny and poignant memoir about love, loss, Alzheimer's, and reviving her father's pornographic writing career, from writer and Mortified liveproducer Sara Faith Alterman. Twelve-year-old Sara enjoyed an G-rated existence in suburban New England...

Two of Heller’s professional writing friends told him that he would be run out of town if he ever dared to publish “Last Call”, probably the most brutally honest book about caring for a parent with dementia you will ever read. But here it is. In spare but specific, almost poetic images, Heller evokes the despair of being buried alive with Alzheimer’s both for him the caretaker and his mother the cared-for, his unwillingness to offer up his mother to the assembly line of need-blind medical care, and the feeling of relief, of a debt paid in full, that came with her death. This is must...

In 2015, Barbara Lipska - a leading expert on the neuroscience of mental illness - was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Within months, her frontal lobe, the seat of cognition, began shutting down. She descended into madness, exhibiting dementia- and schizophrenia-like symptoms that terrified her family and coworkers. But miraculously, the immunotherapy her doctors had prescribed worked quickly. Just eight weeks after her nightmare began, Lipska returned to normal. With one difference: she remembered her brush with madness with exquisite clarity.

At six years old, Terry was told by his headteacher that he would never amount to anything. He spent the rest of his life proving that teacher wrong. At 66, Terry had lived a life full of achievements: becoming one of the UK's best-selling writers, winning the Carnegie Medal and being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. Following his untimely death from Alzheimer's disease, the mantle of completing Terry's memoir was passed to Rob Wilkins, his former assistant, friend and now head of the author's literary estate.

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.

The page-turning, never-before-told story of Kim Campbell's roller-coaster thirty-four-year marriage to music legend Glen Campbell, including how Kim helped Glen finally conquer his addictions only to face their greatest challenge when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Kim Campbell was...

Mama Drama is a deeply personal and emotionally charged memoir by Sheri Smith that takes listeners on a journey through the highs and lows of her extraordinary life. From a childhood on Broadway at age seven, to starring in the iconic M&M commercial (“Melts in Your Mouth, Not in Your Hand”), Smith’s story unfolds through pivotal moments such as building a thriving catering business, managing a castle-themed vacation rental in Hawaii, and ultimately losing everything in 2014.

If a loved one has recently been diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's disease, it's only natural to feel fraught with fear and uncertainty about what lies ahead. Fortunately, you don't have to do it alone. This friendly and authoritative guide is here to help you make smart, informed choices throughout the different scenarios you'll encounter as a person caring for someone diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's disease. From making sense of a diagnosis to the best ways to cope with symptoms, Alzheimer's and Dementia for Dummies is the trusted companion you can count on.