Description

These pages will be a blessing to families dealing with Alzheimers Sandeep Jauhars prose is insightful honest and moving about a condition that most of us will inevitably encounter in our lifetimes Abraham Verghese author of Cutting for Stone

A deeply affecting memoir of a fathers descent into dementia and a revelatory inquiry into why the human brain degenerates with age and what we can do about it

Almost six million Americansabout one in every ten people over the age of sixtyfivehave Alzheimers disease or related dementias and this number is projected to more than double by 2050 What is it like to live with and amid this increasingly prevalent conditionan affliction that some fear more than death In My Fathers Brain the distinguished physician and author Sandeep Jauhar sets his fathers descent into Alzheimers alongside his own journey toward understanding this disease and how it might best be coped with if not cured

In an intimate memoir rich with humor and heartbreak Jauhar relates how his immigrant father and extended family felt quarreled and found their way through the dissolution of a cherished life Along the way he lucidly exposes what happens in the brain as we age and our memory falters and explores everything from the history of ancient Greece to the most cuttingedge neurologicaland bioethicalresearch Throughout My Fathers Brain confronts the moral and psychological concerns that arise when family members must become caregivers when childrens and parents roles reverse and when we must accept unforeseen turns in our closest relationshipsand in our understanding of what it is to have a self The result is a work of essential insight into dementia and into how scientists caregivers and all of us in an aging society are reckoning with the fallout