Dementia Memoir

“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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pat Summitt, the all-time winningest coach in NCAA basketball history and best-selling 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 Summitt was only 21 when she became head coach of the Tennessee Vols women's basketball team. For 38 years, she has broken records, winning more games than any NCAA team in basketball history.

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 can’t remember how to cook a meal, and finally to the Elaine who no longer recognizes Marty or their children. Beyond sincere, practical advice, My Two Elaines gives the listener permission to feel the full spectrum of emotions, including humor, even in the face of this relentless illness.

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.

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.

I'm the Sergeant-At-Arms for the Demented Sons MC. A year ago my life went to shit, and every priority I ever had changed. Being a single dad on the run was never on my radar, but that was the hand I was dealt. I didn't think shit could get worse. Then fate dumped a raven-haired beauty in my lap, and all hell broke loose. Trying to keep my two-year-old daughter and a hot mess of a woman alive while still protecting my club threw my adrenaline into overdrive. Strung tight, danger coming at us from all directions, I faltered...

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...

Wendy Mitchell had a busy job with the British National Health Service, raised her two daughters alone, and spent her weekends running and climbing mountains. Then, slowly, a mist settled deep inside the mind she once knew so well, blurring the world around her. She didn’t know it then, but dementia was starting to take hold. In 2014, at age 58, she was diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s. In this groundbreaking book, Mitchell shares the heartrending story of her cognitive decline and how she has fought to stave it off.

Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK.

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.

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 live producer Sara Faith Alterman. In this cringeworthy, hilarious, and moving memoir, Sara shares the profound experience of discovering new facets of her father; once as a child, and again as an adult. Let's Never Talk About This Again is a must-hear confessional from a woman who spent years trying to find humor in the perverse and optimism in the darkness, and succeeded.

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.

Mary Lou Falcone takes listeners on a cathartic journey of caregiving that is filled with hope, laughter, and tears. At the age of ten, Mary Lou's life was forever changed when her father had a severe stroke that took away his ability to speak. While her mother worked three jobs, Mary Lou cared for not only her father but two younger siblings. Echoes of her childhood challenge return when she later faces the biggest test of her life: her soulmate of forty-seven years, the artist Nicky Zann, is diagnosed with the little-known disease Lewy body dementia, which ultimately claims his life.

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.

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.

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.