What to Remember When You Are Forgetting

Media darling and director of Memory and Healthy Aging at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Dr. Zaldy Tan’s What to Remember When You Are Forgetting shares the definitive guide to thriving with dementia for the recently diagnosed and their caregivers. What if a dementia diagnosis could be an invitation to live?What if the first phase of the disease could be a catalyst to embrace a long-forgotten dream? Or to finally resolve a festering family conflict? Or to make new friends and create new, cherished memories? Renowned memory and Alzheimer’s disease specialist, researcher, educator, and author Dr. Zaldy Tan, the Harvard-trained director of the Cedars-Sinai Memory and Healthy Aging Program, shares the definitive guide to thriving with dementia. On these pages, you’ll meet patients like Angela, who had worked as a singer in a Hollywood lounge before her children were born and dreamed of stardom. Instead, Angela put her dreams aside to raise her family. But after her diagnosis of early-onset dementia, instead of shutting down or continuing to prioritize others over herself, Angela embraced her career anew and traveled the country performing with a local singing group. You’ll also meet Marcel, who considered Alzheimer’s as a wake-up call to recalibrate his life priorities, and Mary-Louise, who didn’t have family nearby to rely on but found an advocate in a new friend she met in a writing group. With an incredibly thorough and deeply comforting approach, Dr. Tan tackles everything from how to have a conversation with a person experiencing early memory loss, to how to prepare for an initial assessment for Alzheimer’s, and what accommodations and interventions are needed for every stage and type of dementia.