“These pages will be a blessing to families dealing with Alzheimer’s. Sandeep Jauhar’s 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 father's 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 Americans—about one in every ten people over the age of sixty-five—have Alzheimer’s 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 condition—an affliction that some fear more than death? In My Father’s Brain, the distinguished physician and author Sandeep Jauhar sets his father’s descent into Alzheimer’s 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 cutting-edge neurological—and bioethical—research. Throughout, My Father’s Brain confronts the moral and psychological concerns that arise when family members must become caregivers, when children’s and parents’ roles reverse, and when we must accept unforeseen turns in our closest relationships—and 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.
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"My Father's Brain is honest and compelling, combining the professional and the personal in a story that is both gripping and desperately sad. Anyone who has loved and cared for someone with dementia will recognize their own creeping realization that something is wrong: the attempts to explain away bizarre behaviors, the moments of frustration and shame, the 'traitorous eye rolls' made by Jauhar as he tried to convey to strangers that his father 'was no longer himself and it was not my fault.' Sandeep Jauhar is unsparing in his analysis of his own response to his father's illness, and does not offer trite solutions, but he describes what happened—there are sharply observed scenes of family discord about the care of his father in his final days—and his honesty makes this a book that will give others what we sometimes need most: the knowledge that we are not alone.
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Lucy Pollock, author of The Book About Getting Older