Aliceheimer’s: Alzheimer’s Through the Looking Glass

By Dana Walrath In the first few months that my mother Alice and dementia lived with me, she said, “You should quit your job and make art full time.” I promise you that as a new American, she had never said anything like that before. It was more like, “Dana, you will never get a good job making art. You should go to medical school!” I followed Alice’s updated advice and took a leave of absence from my work as a professor of medical anthropology and have never gone back. Today, I am using story to upend the dominant narrative not just about dementia but about a host of other issues.