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by Marianne Benz (Author)
You Were Still Dancing is the story of one family's multi-generational struggle with Alzheimer's disease that not only traverses the complicated web of Alzheimer's from a personal perspective, but also explores the latest medical literature and research.
When Marianne Benz's grandmother, Ma, began her cognitive decline, the term senility was commonly associated with memory loss in the elderly. Alzheimer's disease had yet to achieve its level of recognition as a causal factor of cognitive decline. Though the brain abnormality had been detected decades earlier, the medical diagnosis was relatively new, the understanding of the disease murky, and the treatment-sedating patients to the point of lethargy-primitive and counterproductive. The Ma that Marianne and her family knew disappeared shortly after entering a nursing home, though her physical body lived on for another decade.
Years later, when Marianne's mother started down the same path, Marianne was determined that this time things would be different. Hopeful that the vibrant woman she knew as her mother was still in some way present, albeit trapped inside the thickening fog of Alzheimer's, she vowed to protect her mother from the suffering her grandmother endured and seek a more life-giving and abundant experience for her. The resulting journey into the heart of the darkness that coincides with the loss of memory (both forgetting and being forgotten) brought intense challenges. However, it also brought remarkable rewards as Marianne let the falling pieces of her mother go, and learned to celebrate the new and ever-changing mosaic that she became-ultimately reconnecting with her mother in a way that brought light, joy, and a spiritual awakening.
