(calm music)
- [AJ, Heidi's Son] Her name was Heidi.
I just called her mom.
She was talkative, brilliant, creative.
I don't think I'm ever gonna to forget,
how special she could make you feel,
just by talking to you.
(people murmuring)
We started noticing more and more,
mom would have trouble remembering names,
she'd lose the thread of a conversation.
When you see someone that's able to exercise,
and take care of their family,
and they're not even 50 you don't think "Alzheimer's."
(calm music)
- [Kevin, Heidi's Husband] People call it the long goodbye,
I don't know how much of a goodbye it is.
All of the hopes and dreams of the future
just kind of, get destroyed, evaporate.
It is a long, gradual,
painful decent into nothingness.
I was not prepared for that.
(calm music)
- [Reisa Sperling] Alzheimer's disease requires both
the presence of amyloid plaques
and tangles,
which are made of tau.
What we can see is once there's a lot of amyloid,
that tau really begins to spread like wildfire.
(calm music)
These tau tangles spread faster in younger people,
and that may be because they have more working nerve cells.
(calm music)
- [AJ, Heidi's Son] As mom's Alzheimer's progressed,
at first she forgot names and she forgot how to get around.
(calm music)
- If you started humming a song,
or put something recognizable on the radio,
you could see that it was reaching some core part of her.
She was always empowered by music.
The Alzheimer's singing group,
had Heidi singing operatic solos when she couldn't add
or subtract or even write her own name.
(calm music)
- [AJ, Heidi's Son] As it got worse, she..
She forgot how to talk,
she forgot how to sing.
She forgot how to feed herself,
and to walk.
She forgot how to smile.
And then...
And then she forgot how to survive.
(calm music)
- Right now we have brain imaging,
that allows you to see if you have plaques,
that at a alarmingly high level.
Beyond brain imaging, which is quite expensive,
a blood test for whether you have plaque in your brain,
is around the corner.
(calm music)
- [AJ, Heidi's Son] She was always adamant
that you should sing the song the way you want to.
And and she did
(calm music fades)