Book Description

Imagine having a mysterious illness take over your mind. Over the next 10 years, you try to navigate a health care and social system that is not equipped to address what is happening to you. As you slowly lose your ability to think and remember, you have to try to hide the losses to protect you and your family financially. You encounter doctors who are at best baffled, and order a series of nonspecific, redundant, and uninformative studies. If you want to know what it is like to walk in the shoes of one person with Alzheimer's, read this book, whether you are a patient, care partner, doctor, or other health provider. It is raw and scary, as well as inspiring, given the self-disclosure. As well as describing, sometimes painfully and in harrowing detail, what we are doing wrong, it can tell us a great deal about what we need to do differently going forward.. Every individual with an illness like Alzheimer's deserves a prompt, thorough, empathic, and well-informed evaluation. Every family needs and deserves support. Every reasonable research question should be pursued. At the close of his book, Michael Ellenbogen says that, "I would like to be remembered for influencing change...and helping others." I think that he will be. Pierre N. Tariot, MD Director, Banner Alzheimer's Institute Research Professor of Psychiatry University of Arizona College of Medicine Phoenix, Arizona