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Structured around 20 questions you need to ask to help prevent, prepare, and cope, this book is a friendly, authoritative guide for anyone facing dementia and those who care for them. Exploring why disease is a social construct just as much as a biological construct, it helps us understand what it means to live with or care for someone with dementia.
Before Dementia: 20 Questions You Need to Ask About Preventing, Preparing and Coping from Australian specialist Dr. Kate Gregorevic, answers questions both patients and caregivers are often faced with. If you have a loved one with dementia, this is a great book to start the journey of understanding.
Dr. Kate tackles the possible effects of microbes and inflammation in the gut, how stress and anxiety make symptoms worse, as well as social isolation that many older adults suffer especially throughout the COVID years. Included in this are how dementia affects family members and caregivers as a loved one all of a sudden becomes someone whose behaviors you do not recognize. Dr. Kate tackles all of this through a sensitive approach as she discusses the need for power of attorney documents, the issue of driving, and how diet and exercise can possibly help reduce the disease’s progression.
As a daughter in charge of my mother’s care, this book helped me start understanding the often misinformation regarding this terrible disease and its effects on all of us. Dementia is terribly hard on the effected individual, but I believe the effects on the family are far worse. Although dementia is still a difficult disease to understand and manage, this book did a great job of giving me insight into it and how we can go forward from here. - Laura, Library Director