My Life With Dementia
I have early-onset dementia — diagnosed at 61. Thanks to those who love me, I’ve lived joyously for almost a decade with the d-word. I call my dementia “Doña Quixote.” In my blog, book, and videos, I tell tales about her: the good, the mad, and the fugly.
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My blog posts
Winter solstice, “the night when whatever direction you go, you’ll be walking toward the dawn”
Title quote from “Blessing for the Longest Night,” Jan Richardson. Featured image by Peter, “2019 Saunders Family.” I write this in the season of …the winter solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future (Margaret Atwood, “Shape […]
Undiagnosis: I am so upset I can’t even joke about it…
…but, after many weeks, I’m attempting to at least write about it: I have been UNDIAGNOSED: I almost certainly don’t have microvascular disease, which—for the past 9 years—my doctors and I had thought to be the reason for my dementia symptoms. The shock of undiagnosis came last month, when the results of a recent MRI […]
Aliya Saunders, 9 years old, guest post: “This is about my ouma and oupa and me”
Since Doña Quixote has had me locked up in dementia jail for many days during the past weeks, I did not have the wherewithal to do any writing. Fortunately, my granddaughter Aliya stood in for me by writing and illustrating this post. Aliya is 9, a great student, a voracious reader, a bodily-activity fanatic able […]