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GREENSBORO —  After nearly seven decades of marriage, Clyde Wilson still enjoys joking around with his wife, Ruby. But Alzheimer’s disease has stolen most of her ability to respond.

Wilson tells her she’s stayed pretty over the years, while he’s gotten ugly. He shows her pictures of their grandchildren to spark a memory. He mostly receives blank stares or unintelligible replies.

“It’s just about killed me,” Wilson, 89, said about the physical, emotional and financial strains of caring for his 86-year-old wife.

Now more families are likely to experience that same fate.

Alzheimer’s is rapidly increasing across the country, including in North Carolina, where a projected 210,000 people 65 and older are expected to have the disease by 2025, according to a recently released report from the Alzheimer’s Association.

That’s up from the approximately 170,000 who are now living with the disease, and 130,000 in 2000.

Growing older is the biggest risk factor for developing the disease, Teresa Hoover, director of programs and family services with the Western Carolina chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association, said Friday.

Now the baby boom generation is reaching the age of 65, the age of greatest risk, Hoover said. “It’s an epidemic.”

Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia and results in the loss of cognitive abilities. Although there are drugs that temporarily slow symptoms in some patients, Alzheimer’s is ultimately fatal.

As the cases increase, so will the cost of caring for patients, and the effects on the health care system will be huge, Hoover said.

Already, the largest amount of money spent by Medicare and Medicaid is on Alzheimer’s care, she said.

“We truly will just break the bank if we don’t find some way to stop this epidemic,” Hoover said.

Earlier this month Hoover and others lobbied legislators in Washington for their support of the Alzheimer’s Breakthrough Act. The legislation, which has received bipartisan support, asks that funding for Alzheimer’s research be increased to $2 billion through the National Institutes of Health.

In the meantime, local researchers are doing their part to address the needs of Alzheimer’s patients and their families.

Because of testing advancements, more people are getting diagnosed earlier, said Lin Buettner, a professor of recreation therapy and gerontology at UNCG. “That early diagnosis does make a difference,” she said.

Buettner is conducting a study funded by the Alzheimer’s Association that she said could help those living with Alzheimer’s stay vital longer.

The study, which began in January, provides social support and mentally stimulating activities to those over the age of 65 with early-stage memory loss. Buettner is already noticing positive changes in some of the study’s participants.
“People get this diagnosis, and then they stop doing things,” she said. “They get full of apathy. They don’t stay socially active in their churches or their community organizations. Some of them stop working, driving. You want to try to keep people active, both mentally and physically.”

At N.C. A&T, professor Goldie Byrd is leading a study on the genetic and environmental factors that cause blacks to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease at disproportionate rates.

Blacks are twice as likely as whites to develop Alzheimer’s, while Hispanics are 11/2 times as likely to get the disease.

Black people also suffer at a disproportionate rate from stroke and high blood pressure, which are risk factors for Alzheimer’s, Byrd said.

She also found that black families caring for a loved one with Alzheimer’s are more likely to suffer in silence rather than get the help they need from caregiver support groups.

As his wife’s condition has worsened, Wilson has had to seek the help of personal attendants.

“I have a real nice young lady that looks after her in the daytime and she kind of looks after me too, of course,” he said.

Wilson has someone come in at night to help him prepare his wife for bed, as well as someone on the weekends. “It’s a round-the-clock situation.”

Ruby had four sisters; all suffered from Alzheimer’s, Wilson said.

Wilson knows Alzheimer’s will steal his wife’s life, and he’d like to be there with her until the end. But he doesn’t think he will.

He has congestive heart failure, and doctors have told him his time is short.

“I don’t regret looking after my wife. She would have looked after me.”

Contact Jonnelle Davis at 373-7080 or jonnelle.davis@news-record.com