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
Isolation & Connection: a RadioWest film about how my family and I are coping (or not) with my dementia during the COVID isolation
Featured image: Screenshot from the RadioWest film Isolation and Connection. Videographer: Kelsie Moore. As many of you know, RadioWest has over the years made a series of short films on how my family and I are living with my dementia. (You can see them by selecting “Videos” from the menu at the top.) The most recent one, released […]
While searching out remedies for her Covid-19 blues, Doña Quixote gets the hang of hope
Featured art: Detail from Evening at the Window, Marc Chagall (1950). This past week I donned my Covid-19 mask and, with Peter as my ever-gracious chauffeur, set out for the Orthopedic Hospital at the University of Utah for treatment of the painful thumb joint on my right hand. At the hand clinic—contrary to my previous […]
While hazarding the hospital for a non-Covid emergency, Doña Quixote revisits her end-of-life decisions
Featured image: Ana Teresa Barboza: embroidery featuring bodily functions. There is no time like having emergency surgery during our worldwide reckoning with Covid-19 to revisit one’s notions of what the end of a life might look like. On the morning of Saturday August 8, I first became aware of intense, lingering stomach pains. By noon, […]
Knit away Covid eternity? Peter instead revamps Gerda’s dementia website, despite Doña Quixote’s backseat commentary
It seems that the traditional crafts—knitting, crotchet, sewing, scrapbooking, cross-stitch—have undergone a revival in the US since the start of the Corona virus pandemic. In Utah, the craft stores were designated “essential businesses” and remained open even during the lockdown. I had been a stranger to craft stores since giving up knitting about six years […]
“Black Lives Matter,” shout I, who grew up white in South Africa, a perpetrator, beneficiary, and eyewitness of Apartheid
Featured image: Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart),” 1983. Dementia makes you forget, but you don’t get to choose what you forget about your own part in racism. What you learned first, when you were a small child, usually lasts the longest. WHAT I WANT TO FORGET Watching out of the living room […]
Taking up arms against the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Doña Quixote breaks out her glue gun
Today, I picked up a cup in the living room to take to the dishwasher. In our kitchen, five steps away, I could not find the dishwasher. Or, rather, the concept of “dishwasher” did not come together in my head, even though I kept repeating “dishwasher, dishwasher” in my mind to remember what to do. […]
“Living full out”: Nancy Solari interviews Gerda about accepting support from others in her uncertain future with dementia
I met Nancy Solari some time ago when she pre-recorded an interview about my dementia for her radio show. This week the show is being broadcast as If You Are Uncertain of the Future, by Turning to Others for Support You Will Be Able to Live Full Out. Nancy Solari has first-hand experience of living […]