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Before I Forget: A Daughter. A Clinician. A Caregiver. A Journey Through Love, Loss, and Alzheimer's
Hardcover
Biographies GeneralAlzheimer's & Dementia
Publisher Price: $29.99
Publisher: Lawrence Legacy Publishing
Published: Sep 1 2026
Pages: 220
Weight: 1.02
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Before I Forget: A Clinician's Personal Journey Caring for Her Mother Through Alzheimer's and the Lessons That Helped Her Heal
Dr. Clarissa Lawrence had spent more than a decade helping other families navigate the diagnosis, decline, and loss that come with Alzheimer's disease. As a dual board-certified Family Nurse Practitioner, she understood the biology of the disease, the stages of its progression, and the clinical language used to describe what was happening inside a failing brain. None of that prepared her for the day the diagnosis became her own family's story.
Before I Forget is the honest, deeply personal account of what happened when Dr. Lawrence's mother, Barbara Jean Allen, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and the seven years that followed as Dr. Lawrence and her brother Albert became her primary caregivers. It is a story told from two vantage points at once: the clinician who understood exactly what was coming, and the daughter who could not make it stop.
Readers will walk alongside Dr. Lawrence through the earliest signs that something had changed, the difficult conversation with a healthcare provider that confirmed what the family feared, and the years of caregiving that followed, including the fear of a nursing home placement, the discovery of hospice care that made it possible to bring her mother home, and the grief of loving someone who no longer remembers your name. Woven throughout are moments of clinical insight that help readers understand what is happening inside the brain during Alzheimer's disease, alongside the raw, unfiltered experience of what it feels like to live it as a daughter.
This book does not offer easy answers or a tidy resolution. Instead, it offers something more valuable: the company of someone who has walked this road and is willing to tell the truth about it. Readers will find practical guidance for navigating diagnosis, treatment, caregiving, and grief, alongside a glossary of key terms, a curated list of caregiver resources, and a foreword grounded in both clinical expertise and lived experience.
Written for family caregivers in the thick of it, for those who have just received a diagnosis and do not know what comes next, and for healthcare professionals who understand the science of Alzheimer's disease but are only beginning to grasp its human cost, Before I Forget is both a guide and a companion. It is proof that even when memory fades, love does not, and that the hardest chapters of caregiving can become, in time, a testimony of strength, faith, and enduring devotion.
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