Dancing with Rose: Finding Life in the Land of Alzheimer's

One journalist’s riveting—and surprisingly hopeful—in-the-trenches look at Alzheimer’s, the disease that claimed her mother’s life Like many loved ones of Alzheimer’s sufferers, Lauren Kessler was devastated by the ravaging disease that seemed to turn her mother into another person before claiming her life altogether. To deal with the pain of her loss, and to better understand the confounding aspects of living with a disease that afflicts four and a half million people every year, Kessler enlisted as a caregiver at a facility she calls Maplewood. Life inside the facility is exhausting and humbling, a microenvironment built upon the intense relationships between two groups of marginalized people: the victims of Alzheimer’s and the underpaid, overworked employees who care for them.