The Notebook

 Dementia is a very scary thing one can go through, especially with a loved one. Knowing someone your whole life and growing old with them is such a beautiful thing in life. Although it is beautiful, it can also be very sad when you forget all those beautiful memories with your loved ones. The book, The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks is about two lovers, Allie and Noah, who try to figure out who their person is. They start off by doing everything together. They drive around, go on walks, go get ice cream, and many more things as long as they are always with each other. After a while, they struggle with being apart from each other while Allie goes to school and Noah goes to the military. After that, they try to venture out to be with other people. Over time, they realize that they were meant for each other. They get back together and they do everything together like they did when they were teenagers and grow old together. As Allie gets older, she starts developing dementia and forgets all the things she and Noah did over their lifetime. She goes through these "trances" where she forgets who Noah is and starts freaking out. To get her back to "reality" he reads this book to her which is a story of their life and how they met. As he reads this book, she slowly starts to remember her life before dementia took over her. This is a very sad and scary thing to go through. Noah must have been so heartbroken that his first love could not remember who he was. Like I said before in my blog Alzhimer's Disease, I work in a Nursing home that has Assisted Living, Independent Living, and Memory Care all part of it. In memory care specifically, there is an older lady who is widowed. She confuses other older men as if they were her husband. This is really sad to witness because we know how much she misses her husband, but she does not know that these other male residents are not her husband. Another example is that when family comes to visit residents in memory care, most of the time the residents do not remember who their family is. They usually have no memory of anything they did before dementia took over them. This is very frustrating for the family but also a very sad thing knowing your family doesn't know who you are. 

 This book was very sad to read knowing that Allie has no memory of her and Noah's life before dementia. It is sad to go through this with other close family as well, rather than just a spouse. A quote that really stuck out to me in this book said, "The scariest thing about distance is that you don't know whether they'll miss you or forget you." This quote really makes you think about how much your mind could change over time. It is also a very scary feeling not knowing if someone will miss you or could also have the chance of forgetting you. This book shows you so many life lessons on what life was like back then as well as how to treat your person in a relationship. It also makes people realize how people may be treated in a healthcare setting as well since not every nurse can be the nicest. I totally recommend this book as well as the movie!