Gerda Saunders

Gerda Saunders is watching her own mind fade away, said

in The Salt Lake Tribune. Seven years ago, when she was 60 and still a professor at the University of Utah, Saunders was diagnosed with microvascular disease, and realized that the illness— the most common cause of dementia after Alzheimer’s— would eventually erode her cognitive abilities until she could no longer be said to be the same person. Instead of trying to ignore the decline, she chose to chronicle it—both to spread understanding and to connect the Gerda of 2010 with a Gerda of the future. Her new book, Memory’s Last Breath: Field Notes on My Dementia, arrives as the challenges of the disease mount but with its central question still relevant. “Who can I be when this intellect that I built a lot of my identity on is taken away?” Saunders asks. “What can be left?”

Saunders had previously published a book of fiction, but writing the memoir was often a struggle, said

in ShelfAwareness.com. Her working memory—the ability to hold and manipulate new information—has declined dramatically, which meant she couldn’t turn from writing to her research materials without first jotting down the question she was trying to answer. Confusion and memory lapses now hinder her ability to perform simple tasks, but she says she long ago stopped placing intellect at the core of her self-identity. “I make up for the erosion of my intellectual self through pursuing new ego ideals,” she says. “I strive to continue giving love in the ways that I still can, and—most importantly—to learn to accept help from others with grace and gratitude.”