Gerda Saunders's Blog: Field Notes on My Dementia, page 12

All is Vanity: Gerda BEFORE

I want to point out that posting this totally unvarnished photo of myself shows that vanity is not an insurmountable obstacle in my life. What I intend with this post, is to let you know that I am going to have “cosmetic” eye-lid surgery tomorrow–the kind of “cosmetic” that Medicare, aka, you, the taxpayer!–will pay […]

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A new RadioWest film: this one is about Peter, my carer, my fixer, my lover, my friend

My dearest Peter, Last year for my birthday, you wrote me a letter that includes this quote from The Velveteen Rabbit: “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who […]

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Memory’s Last Breath is out in Chinese: 愛我的人也呼吸著我：我正在失智，我面對生病的孤寂，我要留住記憶的最後一息

The main pictures shows the cover of MEMORY’S LAST BREATH: FIELD NOTES ON MY DEMENTIA in its Chinese edition. As if that were not exciting enough, I got a Facebook message from a Taiwanese reader, Erin Wu: “Dear Mrs Saunders, I am Erin Wu from Taiwan. Just read the chinese translation of your great book– […]

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Dementia can go like this: Prologue to the story of Edith Buchsteiner Schmidt, a never-met, yet well-known, acquaintance

For those of us lucky enough to encounter a soulmate at all, such a person usually comes but once in a lifetime. For Edith Buchsteiner Schmidt, true love came twice: first, when she was 16 and met her husband-to-be, Helmut Schmidt, at a youth camp in Germany; second, nine years after Helmut’s death, when she […]

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Doña Quixote succumbs to peer pressure and does “the wombat”

That is, if one can consider two women over twenty years younger than me as peers! The Wombat I have had some ups and downs with my energy level the last few weeks—a kind of mental exhaustion unrelated to actually having done any thinking or writing. When lovely Shauna Robertson of chicover50 invited me along […]

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Las Vegas Lost

Today, Sunday Oct 8, marks 1 week since the shooter from Mesquite killed 58 and wounded 489 people in Las Vegas. A week before that dreadful day, Peter and I had booked our free hotel rooms on the strip. On Monday, after our kids and friends individually called or e-mailed to ask if we were […]

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Ask Doña Quixote: what is the difference between Alzheimer’s and cerebral microvascular dementia?

Every now and then I get questions about dementia from readers of my book or blog. Since I am not an expert in neuroscience or any other medical field related to the brain, I usually steer away from medical-style answers and instead ask if my commenter if they’re worried about dementia in themselves or their […]

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Anonymous wants to know the difference between Alzheimer’s and cerebral microvascular dementia

Every now and then I get comments on my blog that consist of questions about dementia. Since I am not an expert in neuroscience or any other medical field related to the brain, I usually steer away from medical-style answers and instead ask if my commenter if they’re worried about dementia in themselves or their […]

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Tomorrow, Saturday Sept 23 at 11am PST/2 pm EST Nancy Solari of the “Living Full Out” radio show will be interviewing me

TO LISTEN TO NANCY’S INTERVIEW WITH ME TOMORROW AT 11am PST/2pm EST, CLICK on the Spreaker widget on the “Living Full Out” radio show website Last week I spoke on the phone to an amazing woman: Nancy Solari. Nancy is a passionate, and successful example of how you can live the life you want with […]

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“Oh, the places you’ll go”: Doña Quixote’s five minutes of “fame”

Some of my friends tell me I’m famous for having written Memory’s Last Breath. Well, I like to think that I am. But not quite in the way those friends might imagine. While I am ecstatically grateful for the great reception that my book has received upon publication, in the enormous world of US publishing a […]

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