Natalie Bryan, 49, knows how devastating dementia can be. His grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease, and in recent years Brian has seen some of his friends take care of their parents.
It’s one reason why she and her husband decided to move back home to Oklahoma City in 2021, after spending the first half of their careers moving around the country.
“My husband’s parents are also old,” she said. “We decided that parents are getting older, and there will come a time when they need some help.”
When Brian’s father, James Nelson, began experiencing mild symptoms of memory loss in 2024, his family urged him to get tested immediately. The results confirmed that he had mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease.
“We knew what the diagnosis meant,” Brian said. “And for us the diagnosis only means a long journey of decline and ultimately death.”
New treatment approaches are changing
For decades, this has been true. But over the past few years, new therapies have become available for Alzheimer’s patients that have significantly improved patient outcomes, prolonged stability, and ultimately reduced caregiving responsibilities for those patients’ family members.
Early detection is important, 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 may delay symptoms and disability. But most people are still diagnosed too late to qualify, Chodos said, and others are already taking medications that make them ineligible.
Most Alzheimer’s patients still need a lot of care, Chodos said. According to AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving’s Caregiving in the US 2025 report, 27% of the 63 million caregivers in the United States report that their care recipient has Alzheimer’s, dementia or other memory-related loss.
“Caregivers need to stay connected to all the resources and all these wonderful community organizations that are there for them,” Chodos said. “They need to know they are not alone.”
‘We were surprised’
After Brian’s father was diagnosed, his doctor considered treatment options. Her father was a good candidate, she said, because he was diagnosed early and gave himself injections every other week for 18 months. Brian’s father uses Lecambi, but the Alzheimer’s Association says drugs like Kisunla also target the underlying biology of the disease. Not every treatment works for every patient, and some patients will respond better to certain medications or will not respond at all. There are other medications that can help with dementia symptoms, but there are no current medications that cure Alzheimer’s disease.
“I would say we were hopeful, but we weren’t expecting the results we got,” Brian said.
Brian said his father, who is 79, has seen virtually no decline in those 18 months. His family still notices his short-term memory challenges, but the disease doesn’t seem to have progressed, he said, and his father hasn’t noticed any side effects from the infusions. He continues to help take care of her children, drive himself, work with seniors, help seniors, and go to church. He has recently reduced his infusions to once a month.
“For everyone else, like my grandmother and friends’ parents, at 18 months, you can see a significant decline,” he said. “Actually, we’ve been surprised.”
Chodos said patients on these drugs usually still recover, but at a slower pace.
“The real goal,” Chodos said, “would be to keep people in these very early stages almost forever without any active disease progression.” “The hope is really that we can freeze a little bit of time where they were, maybe even help them improve some factors that will give them some better function, like more exercise or better diet or better sleep, things like that.”
prepare for what’s to come
For Brian, this has been a huge relief. As a working mother with two children, she worried that her father’s diagnosis would add another stressor to her already busy life. But till now life is going on normally. She attends some doctor’s appointments to take notes for her siblings, but otherwise her father has been independent.
“I was hoping that I would get all the doctor’s appointments and go with him, but he goes on his own,” she said. “He comes and takes my dog right after he gets his infusion.”
Brian knows that his father will not always be free. But the treatment is giving her time to think about what life will be like when her parents need more caregiving help. For many family caregivers, the diagnosis is sudden and devastating. Bryan said she appreciates the time to prepare.
“You have to think about the financial aspect. You also have to think about the physical care and the time you want to spend with them,” she said. “It makes you realize that time is limited, and I want my kids to have as much time as possible with their grandparents.”
Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by Pivotal and a partnership with Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.