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
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 […]
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, […]