Honoree Maria Shriver with donor and Alzheimer’s research participant Ann Quilter of Laguna Beach, center, and Aimee Pierce, MD, medical director of the UCI MIND Memory Assessment Research Center. (Photo by Stan Sholik)
By B.W. Cook
January 16, 2018
Daily Pilot Opinion
“At appropriate times past, I have broken my strict rule not to interject my personal life stories into this column. With that said, anything to do with the pursuit of an Alzheimer’s disease cure and/or care compels me to share private family experience. Alzheimer’s devastated my talented, intelligent mother at the early age of 65 and it ripped a giant hole in the heart of the family.
My late sister Susan saw it coming years earlier. The signs were all too familiar. Forgetfulness, short-term memory failure while displaying crystal clear long-term memory. Then it progressed to getting lost driving in neighborhoods she had lived in for decades. Meanwhile, I refused to face it. ‘It’s just an age thing; she’ll bounce back,’ I said. But she did not bounce back. It only got worse…” READ MORE >
