My mother has been diagnosed with mid- to late-stage Alzheimer's. She was a nurse of 40+ years, a great mother and mediator, a faithful Christian, and a well-known figure in her community. She volunteered and participated in activities as a chaperone and during recesses when my brother and I were in parochial school. She was great at her job, and she was even able to be a traveling nurse at the end of her career, which she absolutely loved. This disease is what ended her career, as she was let go from the hospital at which she worked near Naples for memory retention problems.

Over the course of the last 10 years or so, her memories have slowly left her, and people she knew has disappeared in her mind. She now occasionally asks about her parents whereabouts, because she no longer remembers they are gone. She doesn't recognize her husband half the time, and she doesn't remember her children even less. She can no longer speak in coherent sentences, and she gets easily agitated. Her ability to walk normally is declining, she can't follow the service bulletins in church anymore, and her sleep schedule has gone awry.

Our mother, wife, aunt, sister, cousin, friend is slowly fading, and this is my cause for supporting Alzheimer's research. It has affected many, many people before, and now it is taking my mother. 

Thank you!