Tattoo release week

It’s hard for me to believe it, but Tattoo will be released this Thursday, May 6, both in the US and UK. This journey began over two years ago when I published an opinion paper in JAMA Neurology advocating for the early recognition and management of Alzheimer’s disease. There was a positive response to that paper, and I was encouraged to expand it into a book aimed at the general reader. Although I had written many scientific and medical papers during my career, I had never written a book. By the summer of 2019, I had a draft. A literary agent agreed to read it.  She was not particularly encouraging.  I realized I was going to need some professional help to turn my linear and somewhat pedantic memoir into something that people would actually want to read.  Scientific writing is by necessity dry.  As Sgt. Joe Friday said on the TV show Dragnet, “Just the facts ma’am.”  Teresa Barker came on board.  She gave me almost daily writing assignments encouraging me to tell more than just the facts, more about what it felt like to go through the experience of learning my diagnosis, living with early-stage Alzheimer’s, and ending up in an ICU with complications from a drug trial.  I think the book turned out really well, and I am proud of it.  But Teresa deserves at least half the credit.

Over the last week, there have already been some wonderful media responses to the book. An interview by Rita Rubin in JAMA has been widely read by physicians. The Daily Telegraph in the UK excerpted two chapters from the book on Sunday and Monday this week. I have had interview requests for podcasts and radio spots from as far away as Dubai. While all this attention is flattering, my real hope is that the message gets out: We need to redirect our attack on Alzheimer’s disease to the earliest stages, before the brain is already damaged.  It is in these early stages that life-style changes and new medications are likely to be most effective.