At the peak of her career, Alice Howland, a Harvard Professor and published author is developing early-onset Alzheimer’s a degenerative disease for which there is no cure. Very early in the progression she gets lost when she is out running and at that point still doesn’t know what is coming, but of course more challenges come.
She loses her job as a teacher, and her relationship as a wife and mother changes. At each step in the progression of this disease we feel it with her. We feel her hope and disappointment in the testing and attempts to help her. It is especially interesting to see her prepare for a talk with the Alzheimer’s Association Annual Dementia Care Conference not long before she really fades past being able to do that.
Lisa Genova, is an online columnist for the National Alzheimer’s Association and brings her own experience in dealing with the facts of the disease. The writing is done so well that you feel like you really know more, maybe too much, about the disease.
