Alzheimer's Daughter by Jean Lee: Patti Davis Pens Heartfelt Memoir/Caregiver Guide, Floating In The Deep End

The Story

Alzheimer’s Daughter introduces the reader to my healthy parents, Ed and Ibby, years before their diagnosis, then recounts painful details as our roles reversed and I became my parents’ parent.

Their disease started as translucent, confused thoughts and ended in a locked memory care unit after a near decade of descent into the opaque world of Alzheimer's.

I began writing Alzheimer’s Daughter one week after my mother's death––when I was stunned, realizing Dad had no memory of her or their 66-year marriage.

I write to pay tribute to the undying spirit at Ed and Ibby's core, and with the hope that the story of their parallel decline might be helpful to others.

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Patti Davis Pens Heartfelt Memoir/Caregiver Guide, Floating In The Deep End

This week AlzAuthors features a beautifully heartfelt memoir by Patti Davis, Floating in the Deep End, written from her experience with her father, President Ronald Reagan, as he declined from Alzheimer's at the end of his life.

Patti writes:

On a blue-sky November day in 1994 I walked into Central Park, which was near my apartment in New York. My mother had just called to tell me that my father was going to release a letter disclosing to the world that he had Alzheimer’s. I had only learned of the diagnosis days earlier. Days before that I had walked in the park weighed down by despair and hopelessness; everything in my life was going wrong, I was completely alone, tired down to my soul, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on living. Then I learned that my father had Alzheimer’s, a disease that everyone was aware of but no one was talking about. That could have been the thing that pushed me over the edge, but instead it pulled me back from the edge. It gave me something bigger than myself to focus on. I wanted to show up for this journey, whatever it was going to be. I wanted to be there for my father.

Read the entire post:

https://alzauthors.com/2022/04/26/patti-davis-floating-in-the-deep-end/