NPR

In 'Memory's Last Breath' An Academic Confronts Dementia

Gerda Saunders was a university professor when she learned she had early-onset dementia. Now, she's struggling to define herself anew as her defining characteristic — her intellect — begins to fail.
Source: Liam James Doyle

She kept getting confused, losing her place in lessons at the University of Utah, where she taught. And then, just before she turned 61, Gerda Saunders was given a diagnosis: She has early-onset microvascular dementia.

Saunders and her husband Peter are South African; they emigrated to the States back in the 1980s.

Now, at age 67, Gerda Saunders has written a memoir, . And she remembers vividly

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