[singing] Oh, what a beautiful morning. Oh, what a beautiful day

You can not look at their faces without wondering, what's been lost?

[singing]Everything's going our way. Hello, Miss Josephine.

Hello, Miss Josephine.

Has Josephine Gallaro forgotten that she is 88, that she was born in Sicily.

[singing]Oh, what a beautiful morning,

Irma Fraad was a lawyer in the 1930s, and then curator of Near Eastern art at the Brooklyn Museum. Does she remember?

[singing] Everything's going my way.

Alzheimer's disease has stolen their memories, robbed them of who they were, and left them here in a Brooklyn nursing home. It will not stop until it has wiped away even who they are now.

[overlapping voices]

Say hello, Ms. Catherine.

Look at the sky. I think the worst thing would be, to be in such a state that you couldn't do things for yourself at all, anything, and you could not do even the minor things, and yet, you're still alive.

Oh, we got so lucky today. The weather's beautiful.

Roy Duhon was diagnosed in April. His wife, Susan, didn't want to believe that at 54, that's right, 54 not 84, he could possibly have Alzheimer's disease.

Everyone can read a watch, so when Roy would say to me, I don't have my watch on, what time is it? I wouldn't think anything about that. We found other excuses for everything. Eventually after all the testing, it was difficult to find excuses.

A much decorated Air Force Colonel, he piloted B-52s in Vietnam. He held a command position in the Gulf War, and before retiring in 1996, was in charge of maintaining F-15s worldwide. Now, every three months he has to sift through what he refers to as the stupid test.

Here we go. Flower, tulip. Cup, smile. What word is paired with flower?

Well, it was tree.

Flower was paired with the word tulip.

Tulip, OK.

The Duhons are desperately hoping that a cure is found in time to help Roy. Short of that, better ways of slowing the disease down. And it just might happen. Alzheimer's research is at the point where their hopes are as justified as their fears. Four million Americans have Alzheimer's disease. The number is expected to rise to 14 million by the middle of the century unless a cure is found. If you reach the age of 85, you'll have a 50/50 chance of getting the disease.

The average cost of caring for an Alzheimer's patient is $174,000 from diagnosis to death. Shocking statistics, yes, but they've helped to force the disease out of the shadows into mainstream medicine.

This is it. I mean this is really exciting. Things are moving very fast.

Neurologist Richard Mayeux is part of the team leading Alzheimer's research at Columbia University

I think if a person has symptoms now, or is recently diagnosed, I think the future looks better than it did a year ago, two years ago, five years ago. Whether that will mean that during their lifetime they will take a drug that will either stop their disease or reverse it, I think it's possible. We can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but we're not at the end of the tunnel yet.

It was 1907 when Dr. Alois Alzheimer, a German neuropathologist, announced that the condition which today bears his name is a real disease, not just a function of aging. Dr. Alzheimer based his research on the case of Frau Auguste D., a society matron whose bizarre behavior brought her to his attention. Examining her brain after she died, Alzheimer observed parts of brain cells twisted into weird tangles, and he found deposits of sticky protein gunk, now called amyloid plaques, the two hallmarks of the disease.

When a person dies of Alzheimer's, and you study that person's brain in an autopsy, where do you see evidence of the plaques and the tangles in the disease?

Everywhere. Everywhere in the brain.

A vaccine that dissolves amyloid plaques is actually being tested now on mice. Whether it will be salvation in a bottle for human Alzheimer sufferers is still to be determined.

Without any doubt, there will be real trials of real patients, probably on a major scale in this country in five years, in progress. I think those trials will probably start in two or three years.

[singing] Bei Mir Bistu Shein.

Scientists are studying how everything from estrogen to antioxidants affect Alzheimer's. They believe anti-inflammatories, the drugs people take for arthritis, may have an impact. There are already two drugs on the market that relieve Alzheimer's symptoms temporarily in some people. More are on the way.

[singing] Bei Mir Bistu Shein

Relieving the physical symptoms is one thing. Relieving the emotional ones, quite another, for patients and their families.

[music-arethra franklin-respect]

One, two, three, four, five.

Researchers believe the happier and healthier someone with Alzheimer's is, the slower his or her decline.

Three, two, three, four.

So by doing aerobics every day, and taking one of the new drugs now available, Roy Duhon may be slowing down his symptoms months, or even years.

Four, five, six.

It's possible that important environmental factors contribute dramatically to one's overall risk.

Steven Ferris oversees research at New York University School of Medicine, designed to see if that's true.

Things like what you do with your brain during your life. Every time you learn something, every time you stimulate your mind, you're forming new connections in the brain. The more of these that you produce over your life, the more it will take, the more you have to lose from a disease before you have symptoms.

So, in a sense you're giving your brain a workout, the way you give your body a workout at the gym.

Exactly.

A list of 10 grocery items will now—

Ferris is in charge of a long-term study that involves the Duhons. A study of caregiver support as a factor in Alzheimer's. In other words, will Roy do better if Susan is doing well emotionally and physically.

And I know you would like to do everything you can to make Roy absolutely the happiest man in the United States, right?

Right.

But what worries me is a piece of you gets lost there.

Part of the study involves counseling, and NYU's star counselor is, believe it or not, 88-year-old Emma Schulman.

I don't have to be strong, and I don't have to be brave in here. And you can put me back together again, and then I can go back out there, and be strong be brave, if I need to be those things.

Strong and brave enough to help Roy fight back what they both know is coming.

Right now, we're going to go back to the word pairs. Do you remember what word was paired with the word flowers?

Nah.

The disease is like a coat that I put on, that I never take off. I'm always aware of it. I just really can't totally shed it. But when you're out at a place like this, that coat is not that heavy. Oh, we have the place to ourselves

For Roy and Susan Duhon—

Great. I brought our books but I didn't bring lunch today.

—that means living as well as they know how, for as long as they're able to.

Back to back.

Yep.

Sounds good to me.

We can still enjoy each other. We can still enjoy life.

This is the way to walk.

There's still a tremendous amount of things that we enjoy doing together.

Oh, a nice place.

Yep, good view, too.