David Kirkpatrick - Neither Married Nor Single : When Your Partner Has Alzheimer’s or Other Dementia

There was a time when I laboured under the misconception that Alzheimers disease and other dementias were tragedies that happened to other people, older people. After all, as a psychologist, a psychiatrist with three years experience in geriatric psychiatry andmost central to my professional identitya psychotherapist for more than thirty years, I had been counselling the victims of dementia in its many guises, as well as the caregivers whose lives had been completely disrupted by it.

Then in 2007 my wife, Clair, a gifted clinical psychologist, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimers disease. As her life changed and deteriorated, my life changed, too. But I found myself experiencing her tragedy as a sort of outsider-insider. On the one hand I was a curious, detached clinician; on the other, I was a heartbroken, grieving partner looking for help like any other caregiver of a partner struggling with this intruder.

I soon learned that almost all the literature on Alzheimers is written for people caring for parents or grandparents with the disease, not for partners and caregivers within an Alzheimers marriage. Yes, there are great books of fiction and movies exploring the married perspective, but I was looking for a true story told from both a personal and a professional point of view. As Clairs disease progressed, I documented her story in my daily journals. One day I began to write that story down formallyfor myself, at first, and then for a wider audience as I realized how many other women and men in Alzheimers marriages were seeking help.

From about 2010 to 2014 I belonged to a support group for Alzheimers and other dementias. Several friends from this group, along with a few others, responded warmly to my request for discussions and informal recall of their experiences with their loved ones with dementia. We talked, listened and shared in confidence, so their real names do not appear in this book.

With this encouragement, I began exploring and writing about some of the topics that caregiving partnersand even dementia support groups!generally tiptoe around in order to avoid offending families and friends: When is the right time to find or even begin considering a care home for your loved one? What is a normal sex life with an Alzheimers partner? When is it appropriate to consider re-socializing with a new partner? Can I/may I love two people at once without incurring the righteous anger, resentment or frustration of friends or familyor, heaven forbid, both?

And so my manuscript gradually evolved into a how-to for the caregiving partners of dementia sufferers, a book that offers a hand to those of you who live within an Alzheimers (or other dementia) partnership. It is not written to make you feel happier or to cheer you up, but to help you nurture, develop and experience the real you. And as you read on, I hope you will find yourself moving far beyond the emptiness of grief that dementia has brought into your life.

You are not alone.