My Life with Dementia
My name is Gerda Saunders. At age 61, I was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. Thanks to my husband Peter, my children, my grandchildren, and others 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.
Blog Posts
Baring body and soul (again): is Doña Quixote still rational enough to consent to being interviewed in her Spanx?
Featured Image: Four Older Women, Aleah Chapin. If you are a subscriber to my blog, you are not wrong to think you have seen this featured image before or received a message from my blog that this was my new post. I mistakenly posted this when I had written only a few lines, and then deleted […]
Gerda will participate in AlzAuthors’ virtual Q&A on Zoom: “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Dementia… But Were Afraid to Ask”
REGISTER NOW to join us on Tuesday, June 15th at 10:30 am EST when AlzAuthors presents “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Dementia… But Were Afraid to Ask,” a virtual panel Q&A on Zoom. I’m happy to invite you to participate in this AlzAuthors panel discussion with your own questions. Together with Michael Ellenbogen (From the […]
Colorado cops brutally arrest Karen Garner, 73, who has dementia, for (probably inadvertent) shoplifting
Featured image: New York Times, April 7, 2021. A police body camera image of the arrest of Karen Garner in Loveland, Colo., in July 2020. She was suspected of shoplifting from a Walmart. Photo from Loveland Police Department, via The Life & Liberty Law Office. This morning, Peter sent me a Washington Post article telling about the […]
Baring body and soul: is Doña Quixote still rational enough to consent to being interviewed in her Spanx?
Featured image: Four Older Women, Aleah Chapin. Peter and I recently received a request from Utah’s PBS Channel, that is, Channel 7, to combine the videos RadioWest has made of us over the years into an hour-long film, which will first be aired in Utah in January 2022 and possibly later be distributed nationwide. Since the […]
Gerda on AlzAuthors podcast, interviewed by Marianne Sciuccio
AlzAuthors is a non-profit organization that promotes books written by people with dementia or their caretakers, including my own dementia memoir, Memory’s Last Breath: Field Notes on my Dementia (Publisher: Hachette). Their website has introduced over 200 books about dementia and their authors. They also give links to blog posts by different writers about Alzheimer’s and other dementias. […]
A question I get from readers: “Gerda, how will you die when your quality of life becomes unacceptable?”
Featured art: Alessandro Sicioldr Bianchi. L’attesa o il Risveglio (Awaiting the Awakening), 2018 Every few months I receive letters from blog readers asking the question in the title: they want to know the specifics of how I, Gerda, intend to exit my life when it no longer meets the criteria of what is, for me, […]
Doña Quixote takes two socially distanced rainbows as a harbinger of better times
Featured photo: Peter Saunders from our 7th floor apartment. Given the downer characteristics of some of my recent posts, I decided to go rainbow this time: Peter took the photo shown above from our balcony a few days ago. As we stood looking together at the late-afternoon cityscape, my heart lifted skyward. Both of us […]