![]() ![]() If perception is an image, the brain doesn’t take in information with camera-like fidelity. To explain this, Kiper dives into the science of perception. But it felt like her mother’s behavior was consistent with a long history of fighting for control in their strained relationship. Rationally, Jasmine knows her mother is sick and cognitively struggles to follow instructions. Later, Jasmine tells Kiper her mother “has Alzheimer’s when it’s convenient and doesn’t when it’s not.” Pat insists she’s been cooking long before Jasmine was born she doesn’t need to be told what to do. Pat, looking for the next night’s dinner, shoves Jasmine into the fridge when her daughter tries to intervene. In response, Jasmine peppers the walls with notes like, “DON’T TAKE FOOD OUT OF THE FREEZER.” At one point, the two squabble over who’s in charge. Pat often rummages through the fridge, removing items and forgetting them afterwards. We meet Jasmine, the 36-year-old social worker who quits her job to care for her mother, Pat, who has Alzheimer’s. Take, for example, how difficult it can be for caregivers to see the disease. Kiper explores her questions with sensitivity, considering patients’ backstories - there is an anxious Ukrainian immigrant, a pioneering mother with impossible expectations, a survivor of sexual assault - and the complex relationship dynamics that develop as a result. Why, for example, do we attribute intention to patients’ behaviors? The brain has evolved to “mind read” - psychologists’ term for our tendency to seek motivations in human behavior, a habit so ingrained that one might find themself yelling at a glitchy computer as if it’s misbehaving. With each chapter, she offers a case study of a patient and caregiver pair - with patient names and identifying details changed for privacy - diving into common roadblocks through accessible cognitive and neurological science. Kiper shows the healthy brain is riddled with cognitive biases that impede the work of caring for a person with an impaired mind. Kiper takes her debut book’s title from Sacks, who called neurological patients “travelers to unimaginable lands.” Kiper, who lives in New York and leads support groups for caregivers, responds, “Let’s not forget about the caregivers who must travel with them.” In 2022, an estimated 11 million caregivers in the country provided more than $339 billion worth of unpaid care, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, with some 6.7 million Americans over 65 exhibiting symptoms of the brain disorder. “Let me tell you something, the patient is fine it’s the caregiver who’s going crazy.”ĭementia is an umbrella term that covers a range of symptoms related to cognitive decline including memory loss, impaired decision-making, and poor emotional regulation. She starts carrying a spare key to let herself in after he falls asleep. ![]() “People always ask about the patient,” one exasperated woman tells Kiper, after recounting how her husband, who doesn’t recognize her, takes to locking her out of their apartment each night. Rather, Kiper shows the healthy brain is riddled with cognitive biases that impede the work of caring for a person with an impaired mind. One caregiver says, referring to a famous case study by neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, it’s “like being an anthropologist on Mars.”īut a caregiver’s slip-up isn’t necessarily the result of character flaws or a lapse in compassion. They traverse warped realities that operate under different rules of time and memory. “It’s not cruelty but desperation that drives us to confront them with the truth.”Ĭaregivers aren’t mere observers to cognitive decline but the “invisible victims” of dementia disorders, Kiper writes. ![]() “We want to reestablish a shared reality,” Kiper writes. Often, the spouses, children, and loved ones of people living with dementia succumb to arguing or pleading with their patients, despite reason. This is the focus of Kiper’s “ Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain” - not the mind of the patient, but the caregiver. BOOK REVIEW - “Travelers to Unimaginable Lands: Stories of Dementia, the Caregiver, and the Human Brain,” by Dasha Kiper (Random House, 272 pages). ![]()
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