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
Alzheimer’s Summit’s 4th Day strains Doña Quixote’s “open-mindedness”: cure dementia?
AT THE END OF THE POST, I AGAIN GIVE SIGN-UP INFORMATION FOR THE ALZHEIMER’S WORLD SUMMIT and THE AGENDA FOR DAY 4, Sat 10/23 While thinking about, promoting, and preparing for the Alzheimer’s World Summit (Oct 20-24), I tried to learn as much as I can about slowing/preventing/reversing/curing dementia in the contexts of both complementary/alternative/intergrative medicine […]
Taking care of us “dementers”: Day 3 of the Alzheimer’s World Summit is all about the people who help make our lives livable and joyful
In case you haven’t run across the word “dementer” (in the title) before, I first heard it from the neurologist who participated in my diagnosis in 2011. “Seems you are already dementing,” she said. Given my interest in words, I found it extremely funny to discover a verb that makes me the main(?) agent in […]
What do Rafal Olbinski’s surrealist visual puns have to do with the FREE “Alzheimer’s World Summit”?
The answer to the question in the title is, “The connection exists only in Doña Quixote’s—aka my demented self’s—mind.” Let’s see if I can disentangle it. You know how when you learn a new word, you see it everywhere? There is a name for this: the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is actually a term for […]
Gerda speaks at the “Alzheimer’s World Summit,” Oct 20-24. Do join me for the FREE online event!
Three months ago, I received an e-mail invitation from craniosacral and longevity expert Michael Morgan to participate in an upcoming (October 20-24) online gathering, the Alzheimer’s World Summit. Michael would be the host. The purpose of the Summit was to bring together others like himself who had started to apply healing therapies that were developed outside of mainstream/conventional Western medicine toward […]
“The Price of Love”: Doña Quixote traps Gerda in apathy, Peter stages an intervention
In my previous post about six weeks ago, “Turning a new leaf,” I reported on my resolution in early June to, in the words of André Gide, “embrace joy as a moral obligation.” I also described the role of a to-do list in reaching this goal. Working on items on my list actually did result in […]
Turning a new leaf: out of tune with what the summer solstice has wrought, Doña Quixote revamps her winter solstice resolutions
Featured art: Embroidered leaves from artist Hillary Waters Fayle’s project titled Botanical Stitchwork. Each year as the Earth’s axis tilts to afford the North Pole maximum exposure from the Sun, smoke from fires in Utah and our surrounding states turns Salt Lake City’s sky dark with smoke. One day, when it seemed that the previous night’s […]
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 […]