Alzheimer's, a Love Story: One Year in My Husband's Journey

by Ann Davidson

Description

In 1990, Ann Davidson's husband, Julian, a prominent physiology professor at Stanford Medical School, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He was fifty-nine. "I'm no longer intelligent", he told her later, "but, please let's enjoy our life together while I can still talk".This is the gripping memoir of one critical year when Ann and her husband learned to live with his increasing dementia. It is the story of loyalty in the face of uncertainty and loss.Following her husband's diagnosis, show more desperate for information, Ann felt terrified by what she read. Alzheimer's pamphlets were grim, mainly describing later stages in the long progression of the disease. The personal accounts she found usually did not explore emotions or create full pictures of daily life. And communication problems, so devastating in Alzheimer's, were glossed over.Alzheimer's, A Love Story, offers fifty-six vignettes, each telling a complete story. In "Toyota, Toyota", Julian loses their car: "I got out and left it. Idon't know why. It's by that brown place...north...up north...way up there...by a brown place...on the ground...where people live...".In "Rehearsal", Julian prepares to receive an honorary degree from a university in Spain but he can't remember the five words "Ego Doctor Julian Mordechai Davidson" that he needs to say in the sixteenth-century pageant.The vignettes progress from Ann and Julian's initial confusion and anger, through adjustments with moments of humor and joy, to increasing acceptance and an odd sort of peace. They vow to go down this road with love and grace.This stunning, touching book is full of visual detail and startlingly honest dialogue, providing comfort for peoplewith a spouse, a relative, or a friend with Alzheimer's. show less