Contented Dementia [antikvár]

IntroductionThe idea of dementia sends a chill down the spine, like no other ailment.Media coverage is uniformly pessimistic. Dramas and documentaries on television depict a gradual disintegration into non-existence; the press chronicles horror stories. Alas, this only reflects the reality of most sufferers and their carers. As the first slips of short-term memory begin to be undeniable and unmistakable, an emotional Hades beckons, because at present there is no cure and the conventional management of the illness holds out no hope of well-being. When Terry Pratchett, Britain's bestselling fiction writer, recently gave a press conference to announce he is in the early stages of the illness at the young age of 59, he said he envied his father's death through cancer. To him, Alzheimer's was 'like stripping away your living self a bit at a time a nasty disease, surrounded by shadows and small, largely unseen tragedies'.Until I met my mother-in-law, Penny Garner, I would have assumed the same. Today, I know that the disability created by dementia does not have to be hellish, that it truly is possible to create