When I was 20-ish and my grandmother suffered from Alzheimer’s, few Americans talked about this fogging of the brain. Today, thank goodness, many people share their Alzheimer’s stories ... and although there is still no cure for the disease, we can place our hope in research.

Ann Watt grew up in South Deerfield and now lives in Rhode Island. She is a nurse who has written two books filled with anecdotes about her career. “The Anguish of Alzheimer’s: The Years of Mom’s Dementia” is a more personal work. It discusses the frustrations and occasional joys of seeing her mother decline from Alzheimer’s disease.

It’s not clear that Watt’s mother, Henrietta, was ever an easy person. She appears to have been very demanding of her daughter, perhaps because of early trauma in Poland. Henrietta grew up in that country, deprived of many basic necessities during World War II.

Perhaps this difficulty is why Watt, who had dealt with dementia patients professionally, didn’t identify her mother’s problem until it was quite advanced.

Or perhaps she had trouble spotting the disease simply because Henrietta was her mother. We may know intellectually that our parents are bound to decline late in life, but knowing that and experiencing it are different. Watt chronicles a difficult time.

In short order, she had to acknowledge her mother’s problem; find a care facility that could temporarily handle her mother; clean out Henrietta’s Deerfield house, a hoarder’s paradise, and sell it; and move her mother to a facility with dementia care closer to Watt’s own home in Rhode Island.

She handled all these challenges efficiently, with the help of a three-month leave of absence from work and a very handy husband.

Her mother lived another 15 years after the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, much longer than mine did. Watt talks about the challenges and rewards of taking her mother, a woman of enduring faith, to the chapel in the nursing home.

She details the difficulties of keeping her magpie mother from snatching other people’s items. And she describes her worst Christmas ever, the day on which her mother finally had no idea who Watt was.

Watt notes in the book that writing it was a form of catharsis for her, a way of releasing all the emotions she felt she had to suppress every day while supervising her mother’s care.

She writes that she also hopes that the book will remind other people whose relatives are Alzheimer’s patients that they are not alone.

Sadly, it appears that Watt herself felt very much alone during her mother’s illness. She never describes visiting her mother with a relative or a friend, and her husband seems very much a background (if supportive) figure.

As a result, the book is primarily about Watt herself. My only criticism is that I would like to have learned more about her mother while reading. Nevertheless, I ended up not only sympathizing with but also admiring Ann Watt. She did her duty in a situation that was never easy.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning writer and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.