Mom & Me Four Archive

    The thing about dementia is, no one will ever write the book, "I Developed Dementia and It's the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me". No one will ever record, first hand, the inspirational impact of being demented. While it's true that Diana McGowin, who developed Alzheimer's, wrote a book, Living in the Labyrinth, about what it is like to have it, at least for the first years, I read the book some years ago and I don't recall that she had anything to say about the experience that would allow a reader to feel that, for all the negatives, there is something positive about having dementia and having no way out of it. No one will ever write the definitive stage play about what it's like to fight back from elder dementia, as someone did about fighting back from a devastating, massive stroke because there's no way back from elder dementia of any type. No one will ever say about Alzheimer's, as Steven Hawking has said about ALS, that having contracted it allowed him to develop in a way he never could have imagined, wouldn't have been available to him otherwise and he would never have wanted to miss. Someone locked in the furthest reaches of dementia will never be the next Christopher Reeve, who became a master of advocation and production after having suffered almost complete paralysis.
    That's the thing about dementia, right now. No court can legislate the reinclusion of the demented into society the way the courts have been able to legislate the reinclusion of the physically disabled into society. No change in prejudicial attitudes toward the demented is going to allow the demented more access to personal development, productivity and prosperity. Until we find absolute ways to prevent and cure dementia there's no way to overcome it nor any way to utilize it in the service of one's life.
    Later.