MY LIFE WITH DEMENTIA https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html Updated link for Zoom talk with 2 dementers and 2 caregivers Wed Nov 29, 6 pm EST; 4 pm MT (Utah), 3 pm PST Telling Who I Am Before I Forget: My Dementia To stave off dread, the Doña tries to keep on locomoting like “The Little Engine That Could”…. “The black angel…forces open my hands /and in the palms/leaves her footprints” “Give me this day my daily…” My Knight in Shining Armor read “Letter to Gerda” at AlzAuthor-Kensington zoom dementia discussion yesterday “Pain does not run just along the body but also seizes the mind,” or, How a “lucky-to-get” clinic appointment thrust Gerda into the arms of Doña Quixote Doña Quixote wants to commission a retablo: “with the sun in my face and the wind in my hair…” Press Books Doña Quixote make-overs that-did-not-take against the background of more serious affirmations of entropy Teeter-totter, or, “The Precision of Pain” vs “the Blurriness of Joy” Gerda re-cognizes her childhood “what shall I be’s” in light of Doña Quixote’s old age Que Será, Serás In this season of our Sun’s death and rebirth, may you be “wound/ With mercy round and round/ As if with air/” Gerard Manley Hopkins (1883) When Doña Quixote is more anguished about the holes in her HAIR than the holes in her HEAD… About Gerda Who tells ego-boosting lies in a dream and knows in their dream they’re lying? That would be Doña Quixote Why fire-swailed Doña Quixote squinches at the fashion advice “dress for the woman you’re becoming (Not the one you were)” My Gen Z granddaughter Aliya and friends Anna & Ellie are collecting clothes for the Salt Lake City Women’s Shelter In memoriam: Wendy Mitchell, my fellow dementer and zoom-panel buddy, died on Feb 22nd after voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED) Can Doña Quixote still cross the road? Only when Peter helps her plot an exit from the Escher stairs in her head A snowball’s chance in hell? or How a (19-year-old) old soul “plays with and is fed by” a horrific accident Blessed are the caregivers, for they make a heaven on earth for those they love: please Zoom with us to talk about “SPOUSAL CAREGIVING THROUGH DEMENTIA” Once upon a grocery store I met an artist who paints what she sees: meet Lorna Anderson Gerda’s temporary inability to walk diagnosed—”A glass key: be sure it doesn’t break in your hand” Things that filled me with awe this week Time, love, and the body: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower,/ Drives my green age” 13 years out from my dementia diagnosis, 6 days out from my surgery, Peter and I are celebrating 52 years of marriage You ask, Gerda & 4 dementia buddies tell “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Living with Dementia” Sorry_misttaknely posted_watch this spot for actual post Doña Quixote balks at being in two places at the same time Failing toward the moon: as Doña Quixote tumbles toward the dark side, Gerda is gentled into a course correction “I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.” “The hill, though high, I covet to ascend.” Bring on my surgery! Let Doña Quixote be my biggest difficulty again! “All I wanted was to be a pea/ of being inside the green pod of time” The vanished dongle and other more dire losses, or, Why Doña Quixote Abandoned All Hope for a Makeover Gerda keeps busy to make the time to her surgery fly. Doña Quixote is a fly in Gerda’s hoped-for absinthe Dementia Field Notes resumed: entry wounds The gift of the Magi, sort of Denumbered by dementia, Doña Quixote counts her toilet paper squares and her Winter Solstice blessings Dementia Filed Notes: Is my stick just schtick? Dementia Field Notes: How shallow lies the anger in my bosom “To say goodbye is to die a little”: Part II “To say goodbye is to die a little”: Part I Gerda and I, aka, her dementia, have now become one Days when dementia is not the worst of my (micro)vascular disease In Las Vegas my dementia wins, I lose As Gerda hits bottom, Doña Quixote wonders whether one more surgery isn’t too much Blog: Dementia Field Notes Wed Nov 29 Zoom discussion: Marianne Sciuccio (dementia caregiver), retired neurologist Daniel Gibbs (has dementia); Jane Dwinnell (caregiver); and Gerda (dementer)