Deferred Hope for Dementia Sufferers

That was her last visit to California. By the time I flew east several months later, my mother was barely recognizable. Her face fixed in a scowl, she shuffled aimlessly around the house she had lived in for 52 years, occasionally muttering in a harsh monotone. Only by giving her a potent anti-psychotic drug was my father, her husband of 60 years, able to keep her from walking out the door to "go home."

Clearly, the drug Aricept, which she had taken to slow the disease's progression -- and the alternative treatments and top doctors my sister, Lynn, had tirelessly unearthed -- hadn't kept Mom from reaching this phase within four years of diagnosis. Two months later, the Alzheimer's specialist would tell my sister and father that he had nothing left to throw at the illness. Except ...

He had been participating in the U.S. trials of a drug used in Europe. Studies had found real results. The Food and Drug Administration hadn't yet approved the drug for sale here, but it was possible to buy it legally through certain channels with a prescription. He couldn't write one, though. It would be unethical for a doctor involved in the research.

To Lynn, words like that are a mild obstacle to be scaled -- or smashed through, if necessary. She found another doctor to write the prescription and located an overseas pharmacy to fill it. In April 2001 my mother took her first doses of memantine.

By that time, she was incontinent and couldn't feed herself. She seldom walked but would sit and stare for hours, except for increasingly angry outbursts. At my father's birthday party two weeks earlier, she had sat, slumped and silent, until my brother, sitting next to her, made some innocuous comment she didn't like. Then she stabbed his hand, hard, with her fork.

Within two days of the first memantine dose, the family noticed that Mom was far more alert and was able to accomplish everyday tasks such as brushing her teeth. Three weeks later, she dressed herself in evening clothes and attended a big black-tie bash to celebrate Lynn's 50th birthday. Mom sat at the table and ate dinner, by herself, with utensils. She danced much of the night away with Dad, one of their favorite activities dating back to their teenage years. She smiled and socialized.

"I don't think anyone realized there was anything wrong with her," Lynn said. "That was the most amazing miracle -- and the best birthday present I could have gotten."

I'm glad Lynn got her miracle, but memantine is no miracle drug. It has not brought my mother back to her intelligent, thoughtful self, but it has helped, and for this we are grateful.