My great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother all got the disease. Then, after I first sat down to write this very article -- which at the time was about caring for my late mother -- my sister and father pointed out a whole lot of similarities between how my mother acted once upon a time and how I act now. A doctor looked me over and confirmed the diagnosis. I've got Alzheimer's at 41, I've probably had it since my 30s, and within the next decade, my mind's going to go.
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While you're hoping the release of new Star Wars movies make you forget the prequels, that's actually terrifying for me.
My mother was diagnosed at 46, and back then, it was practically unheard of to get it so young. The state wouldn't pay out any benefits, and not a single lawyer would take the case. It didn't help that we won the genetic lottery with an especially rare type of the disease. But the family got together, represented her ourselves, and took the case all the way to the state supreme court, which was the closest we could get to suing God for what was happening. After four years of court wrangling, we won and got all those benefits in a single lump sum. But you'll forgive us if we didn't celebrate too hard. She still died a couple years later. We'd known she would.
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