Jan's Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

examination or apparent to friends, family or co-workers. (Seven Stages of Alzheimer's Disease from www.alz.org , the Alzheimer's Association)
    Most people think of Alzheimer's as a disease of the old. They have a story of a relative … a grandparent, a great aunt, a distant and aged uncle … whose elderly life in their seventies or nineties ended in the solitary desolation of this disease. But youth is no protection. The Disease can strike people in their twenties or thirties. And when it strikes early, it can be unusually ravenous, quick and vicious.
    And researchers say that Early Onset seems to move faster toward death. “It's as if they have the more malignant form of Alzheimer's disease,” says Dr. Jeffrey Cummings, director of the UCLA Alzheimer's Disease Center. “It comes on earlier, and it lasts a shorter period of time, and leads to death sooner.”
    As an example of ravenous, quick, and vicious, consider the story of Mark Priddy, the subject of an article in a London newspaper in July, 2009.
    Mark was an ordinary guy, remembered for being “super fit.” When his symptoms began, he was initially diagnosed with depression. When he was thirty-three, doctors determined that he had Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease. Mark and Dione (his wife) had two daughters. By the age of forty, he could no longer speak, walk, or feed himself.
    When I think of the clues strewn across our past that Jan had Alzheimer's, one of them was her fading ambition. She had always worked, from college onward and during most of the early years of our marriage. When we lived together in San Francisco from 1984 to 1986, she worked for the local NBC affiliate as reporter and fill-in anchor. It was the same when we moved overseas…and then it wasn't.
    I never dreamed this had anything to do with Alzheimer's Disease. There was no reason early on to make that leap, and every reason as time went by to deny it.
    And as time went by, denial was a much crafted, much practiced art for us both.

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    â€œIn Russia we only had two TV channels. Channel One was propaganda. Channel Two consisted of a KGB officer telling you: Turn back at once to Channel One.”
~Yakov Smirnoff
If Someone Said Adventure, Count Jan In
    In the spring of 1986, a year into our marriage, CBS News offered me the job as their Tokyo correspondent. The original assignment was supposed to last two years, but somehow we just kept going around the globe – from Tokyo to Moscow, then to London and back to Tokyo for a second posting.
    It meant giving up our San Francisco house and lifestyle, and the comfort of living in a country where we could speak the language and understand the culture. But Jan embraced it as if this was exactly what she signed up for, and when do we begin.
    She had no doubts that we would be fine, would settle in and could figure out the rest as it came along. I said yes, based on her confidence and her sheer excitement for the unknown. I couldn't turn it down once Jan got excited. If she could make it work for both of us – and she was sure she could – the least I could do was agree and call the movers.
    Jan loved Tokyo and its sense of the exotic East, but the next call to move on was not so good because Moscow was the capital of a culture she came to hate, despite that spirit of adventure. “The Russians feel sorry for themselves all the time.” It was said as much in sadness as simple observation. She believed strongly about creating good in your own life. I tried to gently remind her that we had a few more advantages than the average Russian.
    â€œI don't know,” she insisted. “I think they just love being depressed.” She could never seem to comprehend why someone would choose “being depressed.” To her, life was about finding the good in each day and each experience, no matter how trying. But in Russia, people seemed on a centuries-long course of endless tragedy. It made for great, if