Jean Lee's Blog

Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver with @sisterhoodcare on @ukhealthradio- @JeanLee18 shares her experiences caring for her parents, both diagnosed with #Alzheimers, leading her to become an author and co-found @AlzAuthors.

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 Hello Friends,

I was on vacation last week at a lovely lake in the mountains of TN. My husband and I have been trailering a small water ski boat to this lake for 31 years. We started this trip when our own children were age 10 and 14. Now we have grandchildren that age who love the water sports just as their parents did.

Here's a photo I snapped, in the quiet of one early morning, from the balcony of our rented house.

This time away with family always provides a space for personal reflection. 

This...

As a former teacher, I observed students to be inclined either toward areas of art or areas of logic. These two inclinations were most likely separate and rarely merged. Those who leaned toward the arts loved to read and write but the logical study of scientific data and math equations was more tedious for them and vice versa.

I’ve always been an individual drawn to the arts. I’ve loved to read. Immersion in books taught me other points of view and books took me other places. No book was ever too...

 We’ve all had life-changing experiences. My first, and most impactful, happened when I was too young to have memory.

In 1956, I was diagnosed with spinal meningitis when I was two and a half years old. We lived in small-town Ohio where the undertaker doubled as the ambulance driver. I was rushed to the nearest large children’s hospital and put in isolation. Two other children were also hospitalized with the same infection. They died within days. As a last-ditch effort, doctors drilled three burr...

Paula de Ronde, a retired librarian from Ontario, Canada, was thrown into a spouse caregiver role for her beloved husband, Bert. As a result of her powerful journey she wrote My Bert Has Alzheimer's. We guarantee your heart will be touched as you learn about their intimate journey.

Paula shares: I was uninformed but not for long as my life, career and advocacy interests all seemed to converge with the diagnosis. Writing became my therapy and a major self-care issue ...

If you are a spouse/caregiver, you'll certainly want to add this book to your caregiving collection by Susan Elkin. She is a British former teacher of secondary school English from South London who has been writing professionally since 1990: journalism for newspapers, magazines and websites and over 50 books. So when her husband, Nick was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2017, blogging about it came naturally. Those blogs, which ran until Nick’s death in 2019, are now compiled into her new ...

Julissa Cruz Gomez is a Dominican doctor who lives and works in the Netherlands. In her vividly colorful book she takes children on a journey through the brain's pathways.

Julissa writes:

In this story, my niece, along with her cousin, a cat and a dog, undertake a wonderful journey to their grandmother's brain to understand what is happening there. There they meet Mr. Hippocampus and see the neurons up close. It is a beautiful story where children learn that love, pat...

Gina Awad, from Exeter, UK, along with her illustrator, Tony Husband, has written a unique, illustrated guide to dementia care, focusing on six families of diverse backgrounds through her new book, United Caring For Our Loved Ones.

Gina says:

On deeper reflection I recalled my early childhood experiences visiting care homes with my grandmother who partook in creative arts with the residents. As an 8 year old and over 4 decades earlier I remembered not the residents engaging with the arts but those...

Have you seen this gorgeous book? I was captivated by the beauty of the cover. Scott Rose pours his spouse caregiver story out in We Danced: Our Story of Love and Dementia.

Scott writes:

I watched all the things that we built start to fade as things do, but saw our love remain – the most important aspect of our life together. Despite communication barriers and behavioral crashes, we sustained that love ti...

I recently posted this meme to social media with this wording: "Visiting an elderly loved one may be uncomfortable, but it brings them so much momentary joy. Do what is hard. Visit anyway."

I received these comments from our authors:

"Visiting loved ones is such an act of love. Even if they don't remember the visit, they will remember how loved you made them feel." and "Just do it!"

We've all been there. We've dreaded the visit to elderly parents. But this is why we do what we do at AlzAuthors. We ...