Lois and I joked occasionally about my faltering memory when I’d read some riveting novel and chat about it in great detail with her over dinner, then have a hard time remembering it a week later. But one day I woke up unable to read simple words without spelling them out, and there was nothing amusing about it. We were stunned. Everything had been going so well.

Two months earlier, at the end of September 2017, I had the first monthly infusion of the extended trial. Now I knew I was getting aducanu-mab, and had been pleased that for the next month I had no side effects. During the next infusion a month later, the only noticeable side effect was that I experienced a new phantosmia, the illusory smell experiences I’d had occasionally for the past ten years. This one smelled like orange-scented soap and lasted about thirty minutes.