The terror dementia sufferers must feel is unimaginable, but the techniques they use to hide their difficulties - the ducking and diving and keeping the world laughing - are perfectly understandable.

None of us wants to be reminded that dementia is random, relentless, and frighteningly common.

I've never minded solitude. For a writer, it's a natural condition. But caring for a dementia sufferer leads to a peculiar kind of loneliness.

My husband is stricken with dementia, and it's a trick of his condition that events and people from his past are more real to him than what happened five minutes ago.

It's certainly perfectly understandable to feel very strongly about abortion and even to organize and protest and try to educate and change the laws or whatever, but that's a very different thing than shooting a doctor in a parking lot.

My husband is leaving me. No dramas, no slammed doors - well, OK, a few slammed doors - and no suitcase in the hall, but there is another woman involved. Her name is Dementia.