LIVING WITH DEMENTIA

About the Book

We had the perfect marriage. We traveled all over the world, especially to places where we had to sleep in tents. We loved roughing it. We climbed in the Himalayas, floated down the Amazon, and got arrested by the KGB. I had trouble keeping up with this bright, charming, active man. Then he began to change, imperceptibly at first. This is the story of living with his dementia and remaining in love and reasonably happy. As I say in the book, brain cells may die but love does not have to.

About the Author

Elaine Kappel Winik, the third of four daughters, grew up in New York City, where she attended the Fieldston School. Her father, an immigrant from Russia became a very successful businessman, taught his children to live by his ethical values. Her mother, by shining example, taught her and her sisters that steady kindness and humor can get a person through many difficult situations. After attending Connecticut College, she married, raised three children.

Her first love was Democratic politics, but having seen at first hand the remnants of the Holocaust she volunteered with the United Jewish Appeal. Rising in the ranks she became chairman of the Greater New York Woman?s Division of the UJA and finally national chair and then national president.

Her ?job? as president of the National United Jewish Appeal took her around the world. She got to know Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Keller, Golda Meir, David Ben Gurion as well as Yitzak and Leah Rabin. She is the recipient of the Israel Education Fund?s Ben-Gurion Leadership Award, the Harriet Jonas Award from the American Jewish Committee and the Louise Waterman Wise award from the American Jewish Congress. For her work in bringing a high school to the town of Dimona in Israel she was named the First Honorary Citizen.

At fifty, and divorced, she met Norman Winik, a widower who developed sports clubs and camps. They fell in love and married. Together they traveled the world and lived a seemingly charmed life. Eleven years ago, Norman Winik began to suffer from dementia. What the high-powered Elaine Winik brought to his care and their relationship will be heartbreaking and eye opening for those readers who are faced with the responsibility for a loved one. Winik?s first book Still Looking Forward was praised for its lively account of her life and work before her husband?s illness. My Life on A Roller Coaster deals with a darker chapter in her charmed life, but Winik never loses her sense of humor?or her kindness.