Natalie Bryan, 49, knows how devastating dementia can be. Her grandmother has Alzheimer’s disease, and Brian has watched friends care for their parents in recent years.
That’s one reason she and her husband decided to return to their hometown of Oklahoma City in 2021 after spending the first half of their careers moving around the country.
“My husband also has older parents,” she said. “My parents are aging and I decided they would need help at some point.”
When Brian’s father, James Nelson, started showing mild signs of memory loss in 2024, his family urged him to get tested immediately. As a result, it was confirmed that he had mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease.
“We knew what the diagnosis meant,” Brian said. “And for us, that diagnosis meant a long journey into decline and, ultimately, death.”
For decades, that’s been true. However, new treatments for Alzheimer’s patients that have become available in recent years have significantly improved patient outcomes, lengthened plateaus, and ultimately reduced caregiving responsibilities for patients’ families.
Early detection is key, said Dr. Anna Chodos, executive director of Dementia Care Aware, an organization dedicated to improving dementia detection and care. For eligible patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, treatment can slow symptoms and disability. But Chodos said most people are still diagnosed too late to qualify, and some have already received treatment, making them ineligible.
Most Alzheimer’s patients still require a lot of care, Chodos said. Of the 63 million caregivers in the United States, 27% report that the person they care for has Alzheimer’s disease, dementia, or other memory-related disorders, according to the AARP and National Alliance for Caregiving report “Caregiving in the US 2025.”
“Caregivers need to connect with all the resources and great community organizations that can support them,” Chodos said. “They need to know they are not alone.”
“We were surprised too.”
After Brian’s father was diagnosed, his doctors considered treatment options. She said her father was a good candidate because he was diagnosed early and drove himself to receive IV fluids every other week for 18 months. Brian’s father uses Requembi, but the Alzheimer’s Association says drugs like Kisunra also target the underlying biology of the disease. Not all treatments work for all patients, and some patients respond better to certain drugs while others do not respond at all. Although there are other drugs that can relieve the symptoms of dementia, there is currently no drug that can cure Alzheimer’s disease.
“I would say we were hopeful, but we did not expect the results we received,” Brian said.
Brian said his 79-year-old father showed little signs of decline over the past 18 months. Her family still notices short-term memory problems in him, but the disease doesn’t seem to be progressing and his father hasn’t noticed any side effects from the IV fluid, she said. He helps take care of the children, drives his own car, works with the elderly helping the elderly, and continues to go to church. Recently, I have reduced my infusion to once a month.
“Other people, like my grandmother and my friend’s parents, have also seen significant declines over 18 months,” she says. “We were really surprised.”
Chodos said patients taking these drugs typically still regress, but at a slower pace.
“The real goal would be to keep people permanently in a very early stage, where there is very little progression of the disease,” Chodos said. “What we’re really hoping is that we can lock in some of their time and maybe even help them improve some of the things that will get them back to better function, like exercising more or eating better or sleeping better.”
For Brian, it was a huge relief. As a working mother of two children, she worried that her father’s diagnosis would add another stressor to her already busy life. But so far, life continues as normal. She sometimes attends doctor’s appointments to take notes for her siblings, but otherwise her father remains independent.
“I thought I was going to make all the doctor’s appointments and go with him, but he just went on his own,” she said. “He comes right after he gets the IV and walks my dog.”
Brian knows his father won’t be independent forever. But the treatment gave them time to start thinking about what their lives would be like if their parents needed more caregiving support. For many family caregivers, the diagnosis is sudden and all-consuming. Brian said he is grateful for this preparation period.
“You have to think about finances, but you also have to think about physical care and the time you want to spend with them,” she says. “We realize that time is limited, and we want our children to make the most of their time with their grandparents.”
Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the care economy for USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.
Contact Madeline at: memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ With X.
