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About My Cognitive Impairment

Alzheimer's AngelIn September of 2012 I learned that I had a "progressive cognitive impairment," almost certainly Alzheimer's disease. On this site and on my blog is the story of my day-to-day life with this illness and my reflections upon it. We tend to be scared of Alzheimer's or embarrassed by it. We see it as the end of life rather than a phase of life with all its attendant opportunities for growth, learning, and relationships. We see only the suffering and miss the joy. We experience only the disappearing cognitive abilities and ignore the beautiful things that can appear.

In October of 2013, the near-certainty of my diagnosis was downgraded to "subjective cognitive complaints," a far more ambiguous diagnosis.  (Click here for details.)  I'm not going to rewrite the entries of this blog for they remain valid for the time they were written.  But the story is more complicated.

So the memoir on this site is a story of my journey from diagnosis of cognitive impairment to the current confusion.  So far I have been able to welcome this period of my life.  In fact and unbelievably, these months so far have been one of the happiest periods in my life.

There's a lot here: a longer letter to friends and readers making public my diagnosis, my autobiography in order to give context to the disease, a briefer story describing the months before my diagnosis, and all of the posts from my blog (see menu),  I have also written a spiritual autobiography, my history written from from a special point of view.

(In addition to this writing I am very interested in speaking to or teaching in any venue, but especially universities and medical schools, about my experience.  Please contact me.)