One of the claims that speakers at the October 2021 Alzheimer’s World Summit was that dementia could be reversed or cured. Lifelong die-hard science groupie that I am, I was immediately suspicious. While thinking about, promoting, and preparing for the conference, I tried to learn as much as I could about slowing/preventing/reversing/curing dementia in the contexts of […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, I had to cut short an outdoor […]
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 […]
Since Doña Quixote has had me locked up in dementia jail for many days during the past weeks, I did not have the wherewithal to do any writing. Fortunately, my granddaughter Aliya stood in for me by writing and illustrating this post. Aliya is 9, a great student, a voracious reader, a bodily-activity fanatic able […]