My Mother Died at Age 58 From Early Onset-Alzheimer’s Disease. Here’s Why Yours Shouldn’t Have To. 

In 2013, my 50 year old mother, a once meticulous, engaging woman, began displaying forgetfulness, distractibility, and difficulties with vigilance. In addition to diminished problem-solving abilities, these difficulties represented pronounced deficits from her baseline functioning. It was small things at first - leaving tasks halfway complete, forgetting conversations, and forgetting steps to simple routines.

The moment I knew my mother was experiencing cognitive decline occurred in 2015 when she could no longer identify the star that had sat atop our Christmas tree for the past 23 years - my entire life. The next year and a half was filled with testing, starting with a psychiatrist then progressing to a memory center in St. Louis. Though mom performed poorly on the Clock Drawing Test and rapid naming tasks early in the process, it was not until we received results from a spinal tap that confirmed what we had secretly suspected for many months - Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease. 

A whirlwind of events followed. Meetings with a social worker to connect us with community resources, appointments with a doctor who prescribed Donapezil, and the decision to tell, or not tell, those closest to us. We knew that no medication, no therapy, no cure was available to mom, and that ultimately she would die following a devastating decline into confusion, recognizing no one and lacking the ability to communicate even the simplest thought.

Although my mother had not formed a coherent sentence in years, her last words to me were “You are so precious.” Soon after, she slipped into her end-of-life coma and died after eventually succumbing to kidney failure

There were no cure for my mother, and there are no cure for the millions of Americans currently living with Alzheimer’s Disease and other dementia. By not prioritizing funding for Alzheimer’s research in ultimate service of finding a cure, we are allowing my mother’s story to be the rhetoric of thousands of our friends, loved ones, and possibly our future selves.

Para información sobre Alzheimer's investigación, por favor visite: 

https://alzimpact.org/

https://cehs.usu.edu/adrc/index