Kind: captions
Language: en
her name was heidi
i just called her mom
she was talkative she's brilliant
creative
i don't think i'm ever going to forget
how special she could make you feel
just by talking to you
we started noticing more and more mom
would have trouble remembering names
she'd lose the threat 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
[Music]
alzheimer's
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
descent into nothingness i was not
prepared for that
[Music]
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
[Music]
these tau tangles spread faster in
younger people
and that may be because they have more
working nerve cells
as mom's alzheimer's progressed at first
she forgot
names and she forgot how to get around
[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
[Music]
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
[Music]
right now we have brain imaging that
allows you to see if you have plaques
that are at an 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
[Music]
she was always adamant that you should
sing the song the way you you want to
and and she did