Description
The moving story of an English professor studying neurology in order to understand and come to terms with her fathers death from Alzheimers.
Winner of the Memoir Prize for Books by the Memoir Magazine
In 1985, when Cindy Weinstein was a graduate student at UC Berkeley, her beloved father, Jerry, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers disease. He was fifty-eight years old. Twelve years later, at age seventy, he died having lost all of his memoriesalong with his ability to read, write, and speak.
Finding the Right Words follows Weinsteins decades-long journey to come to terms with her fathers dementia as both a daughter and an English professor. Although her lifelong love of language and literature gave her a way to talk about her grief, she realized that she also needed to learn more about the science of dementia to make sense of her fathers death. To write her story, she collaborated with Dr. Bruce L. Miller, neurologist and director of the Memory and Aging Center at the University of California, San Francisco, combining personal memoir, literature, and the science and history of brain health into a unique, educational, and meditative work.
Finding the Right Words is an invaluable guide for families dealing with a life-changing diagnosis. In chapters of profound and sometimes humorous remembrance, Weinstein relies on literature to describe the shock of her fathers diagnosis and his loss of language and identity. Writing in response to Weinsteins deeply personal narrative, Dr. Miller describes the neurological processes responsible for the symptoms displayed by her father. He also reflects upon his own personal and professional experiences. In a final chapter about memory, Weinstein is able to remember her father before the diagnosis, and Miller explains how the brain creates memories while sharing some of his own. Their two perspectives give readers a fuller understanding of Alzheimers than any one voice could.
Author: Cindy Weinstein
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 09/07/2021
Pages: 216
Weight: 1lbs
Size: 9.06h x 5.98w x 0.87d
ISBN: 9781421441269
Language: English
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