By  J. Randolph Evans

Every seventy one (71) seconds, it strikes another victim in America. Former Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt confirmed last week that she has been diagnosed with the early onset of Alzheimer’s. Coach Summitt has won more games (1,071) than any other college coach, with eight national championships and 39 seasons.  She is only 59.
After some anger and denial, Coach Summitt said this after learning her diagnosis:  “There’s not going to be any pity party and I’ll make sureof that.”  There will be no pity, but lots of prayers.

It will be the greatest challenge of her storied career.
There is no known cure.  It does not respect drive, intellect, or ability.  It is an unrelenting disease that does not stop until it steals the human dignity of its victims.  While much more is now known about it, there is no prevention.

Alzheimer’s only starts with someone’s memory.  For Coach Summitt, itstarted with increasing forgetfulness.  As her son put it, “she lost her keys three times a day instead of once.”  She recognized that something was wrong when during a game she drew a blank on which play to call.

But, Alzheimer’s does not stop with stealing memories; eventually it slows and then destroys the body’s ability to function.  Simple tasks such as learning, reasoning or making judgments are gone.  It takes away the ability to communicate and, ultimately, the ability to carry-out basic daily activities.

Coach Summitt joins former President Ronald Reagan as some of Alzheimer’s most famous victims.  Yet, they are not the ones best known to most Americans.  Instead, most Americans know a grandmother, grandfather, mother, dad, uncle, aunt, wife, husband, or friend who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Approximately 5.4 million Americans have Alzheimer’s.  Nearly half of all Americans over the age of eighty-five have Alzheimer’s.  One out of every eight Americans over sixty-five has Alzheimer’s.  And, absent a breakthrough, the worst is yet to come.

Millions of new Alzheimer’s cases will be diagnosed each year as the entire baby boom generation approaches the age of sixty-five.  But that too is just the start.  Its victims include many more.
Almost 15 million unpaid caregivers suffer along with Alzheimer’s victims.  These are families and friends making real sacrifices, both financial and emotional, for someone they love.   Approximately seventy percent of Alzheimer’s patients live at home.  As a result, caring for an Alzheimer’s victim is a daily burden families and friends carry.

The financial costs are substantial – especially in a weak economy as families try to make ends meet in difficult financial circumstances. Time for other things gives way to care giving.  While that time is truly priceless, estimates are that eighty percent of the homecare is delivered by family members alone at a value of over $200 billion.

But there is much more than just time.  Caregiver families spend tens of thousands of dollars each year in out-of-pocket costs to care for anAlzheimer’s patient.
There are public costs as well.  Currently, Medicare pays approximately one-third of its health-care funds toward the care of Alzheimer’spatients.  In 2005, Medicare spent approximately $91 billion forAlzheimer’s patients. Some believe that the number will nearly double over the next few years to almost $200 billion by 2015 and $1.1 trillion by 2050.

As these numbers increase, and the disease progresses for those under care now, the costs will only continue to soar.  The National Alzheimer’s Association and National Institute on Aging estimate that the current direct and indirect costs of caring for Alzheimer’s patientsis already over $100 billion annually.
Yet, amidst all the costs, the worst part of Alzheimer’s is the way that it takes away one of the most important things in life – human dignity.

After Alzheimer’s destroys nearly every recognizable characteristic of its victim, it kills.  The CDC lists Alzheimer’s as the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. There is always a tendency to see such a problem as someone else’s.  It is not.

There is a heavy price for not doing more toward understanding Alzheimer’s.  In the world of dollars and cents, it will be billions, if not trillions, of dollars.  In the real world, the price is even higher.
Based on recent research, there are some promising possibilities for preventing, slowing, or even reversing the brain damage in Alzheimer’s patients.  With just that glimmer of hope, there are no good reasons not to devote the resources to pursue them.

Tomorrow morning, almost 15 million Americans will hurt for someone they love suffering from Alzheimer’s.  Over 5 million others will see their lives start to slip away.  In all, these are 20 million good reasons to push even harder to find a cure, or at least, find a way to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s.