Death by Dementia

You have two extremely active individuals, mid-60s, looking to many more years of future travel, boating, loyal companionship and retirement. How things can change! Not feeling well in one instance, forgetting what one did with the car keys in the other.

A routine unconcerned visit to the GP, subsequent referral to a specialist and in 48 hours your life is in turmoil.

“You have dementia Mrs Mclean, it’s in the early stages and in your case the CT scans have identified Alzheimer’s. No, there is presently no cure.”

We then roll the dice once more. “You have a carcinoid tumour Mr Mclean. Its metastatic and barely noticeable. However, we have made an appointment for you to see a leading professor of oncology who may put you on trial for a new form of tumour suppressant.”

It’s the two words that everyone fears dementia and cancer.

This, therefore, is a deadly personal journey dealing with the many and varied implications of dementia. In this instance it meant caring for my best friend, confidant, advisor, lover and wife of 50 years, whilst fighting my own diagnosis.

Misdiagnosed, undiagnosed, misunderstood and often denied, this killer with no conscience, now mainstream, leaves but an empty shell as a memory.

If you know anyone with dementia, have been diagnosed in the early stages of dementia or if you are caring for a person with dementia, then you should definitely read this story of love, loyalty, passion and patience. A tale of never-ending belief in the future.

Disability & Me

“Never give up, raise your voice, so it’s heard and if you want something, go and get it. Define your own odds. And remember – “it’s not how long it takes you to get there – it’s about getting there in the end!””

Tyler’s Story is one of strength and resilience. Diagnosed at a young age with dyscalculia, dyslexia and hard of hearing, she faced bullies and unsupportive learning environments.

When she started work, despite all her achievements, people continued to try and bring her down. However, Tyler has come through the other side stronger than ever. Whatever life throws at her, she prevails, and her story will make you think twice about putting her in a box.

Divine Communication

Divine Communication is about Julia's experiences in helping people on many levels, including communication between a person and their loved ones in the spirit world. She tells the reader about the strange happenings in her own home and about the spirit who had been stuck there for many centuries. She describes personal cases of deep healings, both physical and emotional, and many cases of healing animals and birds. She has described the miracle of how her beautiful horse Tammy was healed of four broken bones in her leg after a road accident. Included are cases of helping spirits to pass into the light and clearing homes of negative energies. This includes a huge undertaking to help more than 200 spirits from a 5^th-century battleground in a village in Devon to pass over. She describes her own spiritual crisis, visions of the spirit world, nature spirits and some very interesting experiences in Glastonbury, Somerset.

Double Deuce

This is a book on merging different aspects of man into a single whole. There is formula, a code for how this is done. People have called it Da-Vinci code, a secret or simply a code.

The code is your key, every man’s key to health wealth and happiness. It is a formula for achieving wholeness. As a formula it states that if a is to b is as c is to d and this comes to 1.6, then b is equal to c. Many people think that they know this, maybe they know it but they do not understand it.

If you want to understand it, if you do read this book with an open heart and mind then like Archimedes you soon will exclaim, ‘Eureka!’ (I get it). Welcome to the club.  

Edward Jenner – the Original Vaccinator

Dr. Edward Jenner was a man who has saved millions of lives due to his discovery of cowpox as the most effective treatment for the killer disease of smallpox.

Born in 1749, he was orphaned at the age of five years, his parents both dying within two months of each other in 1754. He was sent away to boarding school at the age of eight years, and whilst there was subjected to be inoculated with a small amount of smallpox which was the standard treatment of the day, although it was a matter of luck as to whether the patient survived or not. He suffered side effects that haunted him to his dying day.

 Luckily for us, he survived his ordeal, and as an adult, he dedicated his life to finding a more effective and much safer cure for smallpox and despite a great deal of opposition from some of his medical colleagues, found the cure and in 1980, the World Health Organisation officially announced that smallpox had finally been eliminated.

There is a statue of him in Gloucester Cathedral and sadly visitors to the cathedral know little or nothing about him. As the 200th anniversary of his death in 1823 approaches, this book attempts to show the reader how much we owe him.

Elephant on Main Street

This is this story of Eamon, a little boy growing up in Northern Ireland in the sixties, before he succumbed to Leukaemia, a few months short of his seventh birthday. The book describes specific aspects of his short but remarkable life, all written from his perspective. Each chapter has a footnote which charts the history of the conquest of childhood leukaemia which commenced during his lifetime. The book is based around actual events and things which Eamon said and did which have been passed down. Eamon has the benefit of perspective, so he can describe events that have yet to happen which have a bearing on the life of his family.

Enlightened Living: A Book of Being

Have you ever wondered about how best to live your life? Religions claim to have answers, but they are couched in faith and constrained by rituals that make each religion different from the next. The inevitable result has been conflict and war. Enlightened Living is neither religious nor spiritual, offering instead a rational and practical path that is available to everyone. Enlightenment isn’t found by austerity or following rituals but by the sustained practice of observing attachments and letting them go.

Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from My Houseplants

Life is a journey and finding our place in that life can feel overwhelming. Who am I? Where do I belong? How do I cultivate a life that makes my heart happy?

“He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.” ― Lao Tzu

While there are many books written on self-discovery, Everything I Need to Know About Life I Learned from My Houseplants is unique in its approach by using the growth cycle and care of houseplants to impart wisdom and essential life lessons for living an authentic life.

Throughout the book, the author’s own journey of personal growth unfolds alongside practical information and care tips for raising happy, healthy houseplants. While this little book tackles some tough topics, such as her struggle with depression and experience in an abusive relationship, it is done with a lightness and humour that makes you feel like you’ve known the author for years.

This book will leave you feeling inspired and ready to change and improve your own life, as well as those of your houseplants.

Evolution: The Pattern

The origin of life is the fusion of two slightly different halves: fusion-fission, fusion-fission, fusion-fission… the rhythm of Life. In the beginning of all beginnings, an energetic proton and neutral neutron had fused into one whole. On planet Earth, the fusion took monumental proportions until the mating ritual has reached the highest conceivable degree. Love has a power to create life but also has a power to destroy it if its integrity is violated. Psychopath-men attack women, psychopath-women attack own children while breast, prostate and colorectal carcinomas are responsible for more than 20% human deaths whose incidence in great apes is less than 2%. Are humans on the decline? To find out this we have to unravel the mystery of the origin of life. Only if the sequence of the events in the story of life is correct, a pattern will emerge.

Exploitation

In Exploitation, readers are taken on a heart-wrenching journey through the mind and experiences of a frontline soldier. Through intense and extreme pressure, the soldier must navigate their way through the challenges of combat and emerge on the other side. With raw and emotional storytelling, this book offers a unique insight into the thoughts and actions of those on the front lines, leaving readers with a deeper understanding of the challenges and sacrifices of military service.

Fastovski's Tales of Hampstead

Imagine that Isaac Babel’s Cossacks wassail together with Runyonesque Liverpool Jews outside the plate-glass window of a Hampstead café where a Klezmer band is playing to a packed and tea-drinking congregation of jazzmen, Hasidic scholars, surrealists, old soldiers, and retired strippers; and you have the tone and temperature of this unique and unclassifiable memoir – no, not memoir, more a stream-of-consciousness novella – no, not a novella but a piece of autobiographical fiction – no, not autobiography but a picaresque drama conquered from the unreliable and fertile brain of the eponymous Fastovski.

And who is Fastovski? Is he real or invented? Is he perhaps the alter-ego of real-life jazz pianist, Klezmer swinger, big band leader and flaneur, Wallace Fields, who stares at us from the book’s frontispiece in shades, Diaghilev coat and moustache, over a cup of strong black coffee? Fastovski’s not telling and anyway, who cares.

This is a book to be devoured, disseminated, denounced, and delighted in. It belongs to all who think art and life are one and that the Arch-Savant of Canterbury, Issy Bonn, Rashid the Manic Berber Chef of NW3, and Mrs Karl Popper, have an equal claim on history. I haven’t had such a good time since I shared Sir Ralph Richardson’s motorbike with a parrot and a striking grandmother clock.

Piers Plowright
August 2008

Female Olympic Weightlifters

Not many books are available in the market of the weightlifting world to guide coaches on how to help female weightlifters, and lonely female weightlifters who don’t have a coach. Since I moved to the UK, I have had the chance to coach 1350 young and junior lifters in over 28 schools and my 6 clubs in 5 different London boroughs, of which half of them were female and I learnt how to deal with female lifters and educate myself to give my best knowledge to help them find their best. Since I became chief coach of the Odisha high performance center, I have worked hard to update my knowledge up to the world standard of a coach who deals with 40 lifters at the same time, 24 hours a day. I am still learning and would like to pass on what I learn to others from my 35 years of coaching and lifting experience. I have also written another book about how to coach at weightlifting competitions called How to win Olympic Weightlifting Competition.