Alzheimer’s disease is becoming more and more familiar, and will continue to do so until there will be virtually no one left untouched by a personal story around Alzheimer’s.

Currently there are 100,000 Washingtonians living with Alzheimer’s disease, and that number will grow to 140,000 by 2025. My mother is one of them. She is 81, and was a vibrantly active woman until this disease started to slowly shrink her world, and her ability to manage it independently.

My good friend Nancy is a 54 year old mother of three boys, diagnosed at 53 years old. She may not be able to recognize her first grandchild, when he or she comes. My office manager is struggling to balance a full time job, and be the primary caregiver for her own mother with dementia, after losing her father a year ago.

Surprisingly, for every $100 spent on Alzheimer’s research, Medicare and Medicaid spend $26,000 to care for people with the disease today. We must invest more to find a treatment and a cure now, vs. wait to spend the 1.1 trillion that is estimated to be needed by 2050 if we don’t.

The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee has approved a bill giving $350 million more to the National Institutes of Health for Alzheimer’s research, while the House Committee has voted $300 million. If even the lower figure is signed into law, that would be a 50% increase in research funding for this disease.

I urge Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, as well as Rep. Adam Smith, to vote for this vital Alzheimer’s research boost and push to make sure it is in the final appropriations bill enacted into law.

Ali Schoos,

PT, OCS