Losing My Mind: An Intimate Look at Life with Alzheimer's - Hardcover

DeBaggio, Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743205650 ISBN 13: 9780743205658

Publisher: Free Press, 2002

Synopsis

A fifty-seven-year-old writer who is afflicted by the early onset of Alzheimer's disease, provides a poignant and powerful journey into his memory and the pain that comes from its loss, revealing a man who lives life to the fullest by recollecting the memories of his youth, family, wife, and son. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas DeBaggio, recently a full-time commercial herb grower, worked in daily newspapers in the late 1960s and early '70s, in Washington, D.C., and Wilmington, Delaware. He is the author of Growing Herbs from Seed, Cutting and Root, of Basil: An Herb Lover's Guide with Susan Belsinger, and of The Big Book of Herbs with Arthur O. Tucker. He lives in Arlington, Virginia, with his wife.

Reviews

Herbalist and writer Thomas DeBaggio describes eloquently the terror evoked by the label "Alzheimer's disease." His book joins works of fiction, nonfiction, and alleged nonfiction that portray their authors' struggles with the demon of dementia. In general, we should celebrate such attempts to highlight the perspective of the patient, client, or consumer with descriptions of the writer's own experience with illness. Nevertheless, efforts to inform and influence the public through such books invite criticism as well as celebration. Losing My Mind is intentionally written in several different voices. Incompletely referenced quotations from the Johns Hopkins White Papers, National Institute on Aging progress reports, and various journal articles pepper the book. Although they reflect a certain zest for science, they are ultimately distracting. The author's research for the book did not prevent errors such as the claim that donepezil slows the death of nerve cells or oversimplifications of issues surrounding apolipoprotein E testing. Short aphorisms, highlighted by italics, have been constructed with care to capture generalizations about the experience of dementia, but like much of the book, these sentences are excessively dramatic and overwritten. One example appears at the back of the book: "What better way to die than celebrating life?" The main part of the book communicates DeBaggio's powerful memories of earlier life and the current state of the author's intelligence. Stories of his childhood -- for example, the story of building a crystal radio when he was a Cub Scout -- mingle with the anger and terror of his diagnostic process. DeBaggio became a spokesperson for the Alzheimer's Association, a favorite of Noah Adams on National Public Radio, and a reluctant but show-stealing speaker at the World Alzheimer's Congress held in Washington, D.C., in 2000. He is currently writing more books about his experience with dementia, perhaps inspired by the success of his first work. This is not the first book that has caused me to question the appropriateness of a disease label either for a specific person or as a social construct. Could such an eloquent, intelligent writer, especially one who so graphically describes the failing of his writing at the end of the book, have Alzheimer's disease? Perhaps he received assistance in writing, but if so, why was this assistance not listed in his acknowledgements? Could he have an Alzheimer's disease variant? Hints are given about a family history, but the results of the research into the pedigree of this 57-year-old man are not fully shared. Is this a familial dementia or not? The issues of diagnosis and social construction of disease are essential to this book because of the fears expressed by the author about his label. Perhaps DeBaggio is describing the normal aging of a 57-year-old. Might he have benign senile forgetfulness, aging-associated memory impairment, or even mild cognitive impairment? These are labels. Which of them are diagnoses of disease? None. Which might be a harbinger of further cognitive decline or even dementia? All of them, but so is aging itself, to one degree or another. Diminished mental powers, from one cause or another, will accompany aging for a long time to come. But we should not forget positive aspects of cognitive aging, such as opportunities for sharing wisdom among generations. Does the fear of Alzheimer's disease overshadow efforts to enhance cognitive vitality as we age? Between normality and dementias such as Alzheimer's disease there are more hilly, continuous relations than chasms of categorical distinctions. Alzheimer's disease is a social marker, and those who control this marker are powerful. As efforts to promote the early recognition of Alzheimer's disease continue, how much age-related cognitive change will be medicalized? Can it be that one of the listeners to the National Public Radio program on which DeBaggio was featured was correct in asking whether more suffering than we imagine is caused by the labels that doctors apply? Whatever the best label for DeBaggio, he does us a service in documenting the power of fear of Alzheimer's disease. The treatment of the phobia of a disease is quite different at the levels of both the person and the society than the therapy for the disease itself. What if someone had what we now call Alzheimer's disease and was not so afraid? What if we could die in peace? What if we really could celebrate life as we died? Peter J. Whitehouse, M.D., Ph.D.
Copyright © 2002 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved. The New England Journal of Medicine is a registered trademark of the MMS.

"I have a clear sense of history, I just don't know whether it is mine," writes DeBaggio in this moving and unusual memoir. The author, who has previously written about his gardening business (Growing Herbs from Seed, Cutting and Root), documents his mental deterioration from Alzheimer's. Diagnosed with the disease in 1999 at the age of 57, DeBaggio undertook this project in order to increase awareness of this devastating illness from a patient's point of view. He describes how his gradual loss of memory has impacted his life. For example, after he became confused about how to get to his niece's house, he realized he had to give up driving a car. The increased loss of language has been extremely difficult for a man who once worked as a journalist and a freelance writer. Interspersed throughout the narrative are DeBaggio's recollections of his childhood events that may soon be lost to him. He also describes the disease's negative effect on his wife and grown son. Although DeBaggio provides information on the medical advances that are being made to treat this disease, it is clear that a breakthrough will come too late for him. With this rare first-person account, DeBaggio has made a significant contribution to literature on an illness that currently affects four million Americans.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

This perspective on a well-known disease is unusual because the author is the patient in question. DeBaggio, a writer and commercial grower of herbs and other plants, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at 57 and began keeping the journal on which the book is based. Since Alzheimer's can be definitely diagnosed only at autopsy, a strong element of uncertainty plays a role in DeBaggio's roughly two-year account, in which he combines reports from the scientific literature and autobiography. The resultant, surprisingly unified book features striking contrasts between his disease's course and his relationships with his wife and son. The inevitable loss of memories, growing confusion, and increasing inability to use words are major motifs of this saddening and perforce pessimistic story, which includes DeBaggio's castigation of his early doctors' impersonality and uncaring attitudes. A fine contribution to the vast Alzheimer's literature. William Beatty
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

In 1999, when he was 57 years old, DeBaggio was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Shortly thereafter, he began this moving memoir. A former journalist, professional gardener, and author of two gardening books, DeBaggio was determined to record the course of his illness "to break through the sense of shame and silence [that] Alzheimer's has engendered and to tell the world what it is like." He recounts stories from his past, daily life since his diagnosis, and its effect on his wife and son, along with summaries of scientific information about Alzheimer's gleaned from the professional literature. Interspersed with that information are his almost epigrammatic musings on the loneliness, fear, anger, and even puzzlement engendered by this "evil disease that sleeps on the edge of [his] consciousness." DeBaggio soon discovered that Alzheimer's freed him to "write seriously and well." Truly, the act of remembering and writing gave purpose to his days when he could no longer work in his greenhouses. However, finding the words to express himself eventually became "insurmountable," and his ability to perform everyday tasks gradually diminished; he found himself struggling to finish the book before "there [was] no memory left." DeBaggio's vivid descriptions of changes in memory and thought patterns, as well as his nocturnal visual hallucinations, illuminate this harrowing disease as few other first-person accounts have. Highly recommended. [Thanks to medications, the author is doing fairly well. Ed.] Karen McNally Bensing, Benjamin Rose Inst. Lib., Clevelan.
- Karen McNally Bensing, Benjamin Rose Inst. Lib., Cleveland
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Free Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743205650
• ISBN 13: 9780743205658
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224