As soon as I heard my sister’s diagnosis (2018), I knew I was in over my head. A lawyer by trade, my instinct was to immediately begin researching her conditions and from there I created detailed notes. Being a “more is better” person, I went into this experience assuming more notes and more details were always going to help me. And they did! I was always prepared for meetings with my sister’s doctors, therapists, assisted living staff, and memory care staff.
And because I’m a packrat, I archived all of my emails between family members, friends, doctors, etc. I also kept a written journal and notes from my own therapy sessions, and I saved posts that I made on the two social networks where I spend time, including ALZConnected.
These documents left me well-prepared to reconstruct the last several years into this memoir.
At the start of this project, I created a detailed outline combining information from all of these sources, and then sorted them by year to create a chronology. It was great for organization—but also kind of scary because with that chronology in front of my face, I could clearly see the relentlessness of this disease and, in Peggy’s case, the speed of its progression. Peggy passed away March 6, 2024, just five and a half years after her initial diagnosis.
I also want to note: I originally wrote down my personal accounts of all the events that happened in real time, reflecting the immediacy of what we were all going through during those moments. I only included what I knew at the time. But I have the benefit of perspective now—plus additional research and sources—so I’ve tried to edit my memoir’s chapters to incorporate this new information. I wanted to make sure to include the various methods I used to help my sister, and some of the detective work required of me in order to deal with the sorts of problems that crop up when one is a caregiver. If I realized something in hindsight, I added that too.
Please remember that I’m not a doctor and I’m not giving medical advice. And I’m not trying to provide an exhaustive list of everything that a caregiver may want to know, mostly because I don’t know everything! But there is a lot of information out there for any of the specifics you might need to know to help your own loved one. I suggest you look for the articles and books that are applicable to your loved one’s precise diagnosis and start with those.
Thank you for reading. I hope these pages can serve as a starting point for you if you’re beginning caregiving for a loved one. I know all of this can seem overwhelming—I was often overwhelmed myself. But hard as it is, caregiving is doable if you take things one step at a time.
And feel free to stop by here and ask questions. Hopefully I’ll have some kind of an answer for you! (And if I don’t know the answers, I’ll try my best to point you to another person, or site, or resource that can provide them for you.) I wish you the very best of luck.
Thank you for reading my story.
D
January 5, 2026