In the months after my partner, Alex, was diagnosed with dementia in 2019, more than one person advised me to “save” myself. What they meant was that I should move Alex into an assisted-living facility and get on with my life. It wasn’t an unreasonable suggestion. Alex was 23 years older than me — 75 to my 52. Although we had been in a relationship for 18 years, we had lived together for less than a year. We were not married. He had two adult daughters. It didn’t have to be me.
Guest column by Sue Dickman
And yet, I never seriously considered it. Alex’s diagnosis followed months of realizing more and more urgently that something was seriously wrong. It was as if we had entered a tunnel in which the only exits were into doctor’s offices for tests and scans and increasingly concerned conversations. Along with the diagnosis, Alex was told he had to immediately stop driving and retire from his job as a therapist. We were thrust into a world of new doctors, unfamiliar terminology and multiple layers of bureaucracy. It required skill and smarts to navigate, qualities Alex no longer possessed. I didn’t have time to plan an escape route.
