The person you need to know is Wendy Mitchell. She has written three books and I just finished reading her first book, Somebody I Used to Know. I did not expect to be so moved and so educated by this memoir. Wendy Mitchell invites us to journey with her as a woman with dementia and it is quite a journey.
I am not new to dementia. My mother had vascular dementia. As a priest, I have had a number of parishioners with Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia. I wish I had read Wendy Mitchell’s books back then (though they weren’t available since the first one was published in 2018) as it would have helped me understand so much better what my mother and others were experiencing. It also would have helped me know how I might have handled certain situations, as well as helped other families compassionately face the challenges brought on by dementia.
This is an unusual book about dementia because it is told in the first person. Yes, Wendy Mitchell communicates very well with the written word. She shares what it is like to live with dementia from her initial suspicions about her fogginess and forgetfulness, to the diagnosis (she was diagnosed at age 58 with young-onset dementia), to telling her employer and co-workers, to adjusting to daily life. And yes, there are so many adjustments that must be made.
Most of us are frightened—rightfully so— of “losing our mind” and what that means for our life and those we love. Wendy does not play down the terror of it all but she also shows how one faces that terror and goes on living. She continues to speak (with a carefully written out speech so she does not forget what she wants to say) at different conferences as well as participating in numerous research projects about dementia. She firmly believes she still has a purpose in life and, as a reader of her books, you cannot help but agree.
Her three books are:
Somebody I Used to Know (2018)
What I Wish People Knew About Dementia (2022)
One Last Thing; How to live with the end in mind (2023)
The first two books were gifted to me by two other residents who live here at the retirement community where I live. The recent one I have ordered. You can also follow Wendy Mitchell on her blog (https://whichmeamitoday.wordpress.com) and watch a number of YouTube videos she participated in making. She strives to help others with dementia know that they are not alone which I think helps her to realize that she is not alone either.
As one review in the Guardian stated, “Running under all the commonsense pieces of advice is a deeper and more existential message, one for all of us, young and old, in health or frailty: bend with the change rather than be broken by it.”
Bend with the change rather than be broken by it.
Good advice for all of us. Good reading for all of us, too. I strongly recommend that you get to know Wendy Mitchell.
Thank you, Jeanne - I love her advice regarding change!
Thanks, Jeanne. I just ordered the first one.