WRITING A BOOK ABOUT DEMENTIA WITHOUT ACTUALLY WRITING A BOOK ABOUT DEMENTIA.

I had to crawl across the experience before I could write about it.
   What the fuck does that mean?
   Surely that part is obvious.
   OBVIOUS.
   As obvious as an OBVIOUS robot made by the VERY OBVIOUS ROBOT COMPANY of OBVIOUS, NEW JERSEY, running OBVIOUS 2.obvious as an operating system, obviously.
   I would send you to a link for that company, but, obviously, for the purpose of storytelling, it doesn't fucking exist.
   More obviously, there is at least one company operating with obvious in the title, and, if I'd sent you looking, you'd obviously have stumbled upon that instead.
   Where are the obvious robots, and why aren't you located in New Jersey?
   Yes, you'd ask that of the company. Blame apportioned might even be apportioned in my direction.
   Okay. It's, ahem, obvious...that I'd have to experience the strangeness of being a dementia carer before I could truly get into the topic with readers.
   But seriously, though. What the fuck does that mean?
   Notes?
   Yes. I took notes in a hospital corridor, waiting for a scanner. I took notes when I felt it important. Even if the notes themselves weren't important.
   Taking notes keeps you busy. Makes you observant. Is that enough? Of course not. I made a point of keeping certain receipts. If I bought some item of equipment that related to dementia-care, I had a record of the transaction.
   Important, if I wanted to create a timeline. Sometimes, that level of detail wasn't available to me. But when it was, I seized on it. I'm not an engineer. Or a pilot. A farmer. Any of those things.
   I'm a writer. And I knew I really had to crawl across the whole business of becoming a carer, hunting out clues. Looking for things of interest to readers. Not things of interest to me.
   Thing is, I looked at books on dementia. They weren't of interest to me. And, as a dementia carer, that was fucked up. Yes, I'll be swearing a lot in the book. No, you won't be hearing much about life before dementia.
   I don't really want to read about how great your gran was before the decline. No. I want practical stuff. How the fuck am I going to deal with this? And how the fuck am I going to deal with this, without turning the experience into a clinical fucking textbook?
   This is what I puzzle over as I trudge, and crawl, and stumble, writing this dementia book.