I am a retired neurologist with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease. Although I cared for many patients with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias during my career, it never occurred to me that I might one day have it too. I do. So now I’m on the patient’s side of the experience, an expert from the inside out on my own early-stage Alzheimer’s as it stakes out its slowly growing presence in my brain

The operative phrase here is “slowly growing.” Most Alzheimer’s patients are diagnosed when symptoms of the disease show up in their behavior or cognitive functioning – they may seem noticeably “off” to those who know them or to themselves. That’s typically around the time that the damage to brain cells has become moderate to severe. I found mine much earlier because I went looking for it. It was a fluke, really, that I stumbled across some genetic information that prompted my clinical search.