Slow Dancing with a Stranger

When Meryl Comer's husband, Dr. Harvey Gralnick, chief of hematology and oncology at the National Institutes of Health, began forgetting routine things and demonstrating abrupt changes in behavior, doctors were confounded as to what was wrong. Diagnoses ranged from stress and depression to Lyme disease, from pernicious anemia to mad cow's disease supposedly acquired from a trip to London. Finally, after years of inconclusive tests, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, a seemingly impossible disease for a man in his prime.

Comer gave up her television career and for the next two decades cared for Harvey in their home, tending to his every need while watching him regress into an emotionally distant and sometimes violent stranger. "The man I live with is not the man I fell in love with and married," she writes. "He has slowly been robbed of what we all take for granted - the ability to navigate the mundane activities of daily living: bathing, shaving, dressing, feeding, and using the bathroom. His inner clock is confused and can't be reset. His eyes are vacant and unaware."

In Slow Dancing with a Stranger, Comer brings readers face-to-face with Alzheimer's, detailing the realities, its stressful emotional and financial hardships for families, as well as the limitations of doctors and assisted living and long term care facilities to manage difficult patient behaviors. With candor and grace, Comer chronicles her personal experiences - her mistakes, her heartbreaks, her minor victories - to paint an intimate and moving portrait of Alzheimer's and, in the process, she reveals the truth about the disease and everyone it affects.