“Living in the Moment: A Guide to Overcoming Challenges and Finding Moments of Joy in Alzheimer’s Disease and Other Dementias” by Dr. Elizabeth Landsverk is an easy to read, practical guide for the family navigating this journey and focuses on helping to create the best life you can for your loved one with dementia. While I am not the primary caregiver for my loved I still found it really informative. The book isn’t super depth but goes just deep enough to serve as a good reference, especially when it comes to understanding the types of medications your loved one may be taking or offered. The caveat is since I’m not a pharmacist, physician, or other type of provider I can’t say with 100% certainty that all the information is correct. I would hope so given that the author is a physician specializing in this field but you never know. Therefore it’s always best to talk with your own care team when making decisions about medications (and procedures, tests etc.). Something that I really liked about the book is the author emphasized making decisions with (and when needed, for) your loved one that essentially boils down improving or maintaining quality vs quantity of life.

The author describes not only the medical aspect of caring for someone with dementia but also helps you think about the financial and legal sides of things. These chapters provide a short overview of the different kinds of paperwork that can be completed such as power of attorney, durable power of attorney (which I learned are two separate things), living wills, trusts and more,

Finally, the author stresses the importance of caring for the caregiver. This includes tips for finding resources in your area and knowing/accepting if the time is right to either bring caregivers into the home or to move your loved into a facility. Tips for identifying the right type of placement for your loved one are included which I think is particularly useful.

I’ll end my review with a quote from the book that I found particularly powerful: