Overview

Most people, at some point in their lives, confront issues with aging parents. Whether the problems are medical, financial, logistical, or emotional-or some combination-it's easy to feel overwhelmed and helpless. My Mother's Keeper: One Family's Journey through Dementia chronicles the author's journey through parental deterioration. At first, she didn't even recognize it as an illness. Once she found herself up to her neck in a nightmare, she had no time for research. She spent every waking moment coping, reacting, and scrambling-and was simply too exhausted to do more than try to put out each fire as it flared. Later, once the crisis subsided, she found several books, articles, and websites that contained helpful information about dementia, its associated behaviors, and care suggestions for patients. What she didn't find were stories of how families coped with it. By sharing her experience, she hopes to help fill that gap. This book tells her family's story of rapidly-accelerating personality changes, aggression, violence, fear, mistakes, hopelessness, helplessness, and eventual closure. The author hopes it will help readers who find themselves embarking on a similar journey understand that they are not alone.

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9781737020608

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Reviews

This book is incredible and the value the story can add for others going through a similar life event is unmeasurable. Towards the end the author says, ...if I can only help one other person... MISSION ACCOM-PLISHED! I found this book exceptionally helpful in my recent journey with my mom and beyond. Understanding the journey we were on makes it sting a little less. It's an incredible story and a heartbreaking jour-ney that needs to be shared with the world. -John E., Lincoln, Nebraska I couldn't put it down! It's a wonderful tribute to the family. I feel as if I've met them before, and I liked them all very much. The story provided the push to start on my own obituary which I've been meaning to do for a while now. And, yes, all those expenses-while I've given passing thought to them now and again-I may have to take a new look at our wills again to see if we can afford to die. The author is a most loving daughter. -Laurie W., Hayesville, North Carolina I'm a great fan of stories about polar explorations during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Often even the most well-prepared expeditions were ultimately doomed by the vagaries of weather, equipment reliability, and human personality. Men endured months (even years) of unrelenting cold and wet, limited sunlight, claustro-phobic quarters, excruciatingly boring routines and too often succumbed to lead poisoning, snow blindness, frostbite resulting in loss of digits, starvation (sometimes cannibalism), and all kinds of mental aberrations. Yet, some did make it through. How much I have been awed by them! Well, they have nothing on this journey. As I read the story I wondered, HOW did she get through this? I marvel at the physical, mental, spiritual, and moral strength manifested throughout those three years of hell. And with no one to blame for it! For me, the most poignant sentence in the whole story is I feel like a monster. It almost made me cry. The author asked, What can I do? Well, no matter what she thought she did, she heroically gave what she could and well-served the four people closest to her. I can't imagine myself doing the same. The story really wore me out emotionally. -Pam S., Crookston, Nebraska

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