My Bert Has Alzheimer’s:
Caregiving is Living for Two
This is an intimate, detailed account of a wife's experience with her husband's dementia.
There is no shying away from the horror of Alzheimer’s disease, but its awfulness doesn't strip from the experience of the powerful companions that accompany those enduring it-namely, love, laughter, and community.
Thrust into the caregiver role Paula now enters a new world of uncertainty and chaos where she learns that the disease is as individual as each person who contracts it.
Here is a caregiver's poignant and revealing story of the mental, physical, and emotional stress of caring for the love of her life, her Bert, as he gives over to his neurological disease.
She meets each challenge, finds a solution to each issue that arises, then shares her new-found knowledge with other caregivers. Sharing the information is the motivation for writing the book.
With humour, compassion, wisdom, and deep feeling, she describes this slice of their conjoined lives. More than a record of the impact of a disease this is, at its essence, a story of love.
Together the two become stronger than the disease.
Available in Print: Amazon; Barnes and Noble; FriesenPress https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000213242990
E-Book: Amazon, Google Books; Apple Books
Paula de Ronde's book, a work of incredible love and courage, is a timely look at the consequences of an unravelling disease and its demands, and the creative ways in which traversing its unyielding passage with curiosity and innovation rather than despair or fear, it can play a part in comforting the beloved patient and reshaping the caregiver's understanding of the meaning of life.
Rachel Manley
This book is a treasure! Packed with great stories, it is a wonderful pairing of the true and still ongoing account by a caregiver, Paula, as she learns about and shares with her readers the journey she had to undertake when a cruel sickness struck after 42 plus years of marriage with Bert. Alzheimer disease took the mind of her 80 year old husband, and it became that of a 2-3 year old. The book is a powerful compendium written with great skill around an ongoing and moving account of living in two worlds for both Paula and Bert. It uses humour and poetry, and details resources that others in similar situations will find useful. Particularly moving, are the sections when Paula and Bert had to experience the pangs of separation - the first time when Bert's condition made specialist care in a facility necessary; the second came (and continues) when Covid-19 made visits to Bert seriously restricted. All in all, the author has excelled at that difficult task of telling a painful personal story with wide appeal, giving inspiration for others, like myself, who have been, or will be, in care-giving situations.
Rev. Dr. Barry Davies, CD Caregiver