The jumbled organization that annoyed me before now seemed to set the tone of what Alzheimer’s is really like, not being able to stay on track for more than a few minutes at a time. I was entranced and read it in a single day. This time I could relate to most everything he described. I mentioned Greg O’Brien’s On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer’s Disease and Wendy Mitchell’s Somebody I Used to Know: A Memoir, but I omitted DeBaggio’s book. Why did I give it only three stars eight years ago? I think I found the frenetic structure hard to follow, switching from old memories of childhood to current issues with his own cognitive problems to segments about new understanding and advances in Alzheimer’s as of 1999. According to the OED it is defined as “the study of the life of an individual or the history of a community with regard to the influence of a particular disease or disorder,” essentially a memoir about life with a certain disease. I must admit that I had never heard the word before, but it does indeed exist. Lees asked me which are my favorite Alzheimer’s pathographies. (Unfortunately, I believe the book review is still hidden behind a paywall for those who do not have institutional access.) During our conversations, Prof. He had written a very thorough review of my book A Tattoo on my Brain: A Neurologist’s Personal Battle against Alzheimer’s Disease for the British journal Brain last summer. I had almost forgotten about it when recently I was exchanging emails with Professor Andrew Lees, a renowned British expert on Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. I only gave it three stars on Goodreads at the time. I had very mild cognitive impairment, but I knew I was likely on the Alzheimer’s trajectory due to my loss of smell and two copies of the APOE-4 allele.

It was published in 2000, two years after his diagnosis at age 57. While enjoying the July 4 th holiday on the Oregon Coast with my family this weekend, I reread Thomas DeBaggio’s memoir of his early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. My six-year-old granddaughter flying a kite.

Thomas debaggio losing my mind