She Moved Closer to Home for Her Aging Father. Then, a Surprise

Natalie Bryan, 49, knows how devastating dementia can be. Her grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease, and in recent years Bryan has watched some of her friends care for their own parents.

It’s one of the reasons why she and her husband decided to move back home to Oklahoma City in 2021, after spending the first half of their careers moving all around the country.

“My husband has older parents as well,” she said. “We decided that the parents are getting older, and there will be a time that they need some help.”

When Bryan’s father, James Nelson, started to show minor signs of memory lapse in 2024, his family urged him to get tested right away. The results confirmed he had mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer’s disease.

“We knew what the diagnosis meant,” Bryan said. “And the diagnosis, to us, meant just a long journey of decline and ultimately death.”

New Treatments Are Changing the Outlook

For decades, that’s been true. But new therapies for Alzheimer’s patients that have become available in the last couple of years have vastly improved patients’ outcomes, prolonged plateaus and ultimately reduced the caregiving responsibilities for those patients’ family members.

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, treatments can delay symptoms and disability. But most people are still diagnosed too late to qualify, Chodos said, and others are on medications already that make them ineligible.

Most Alzheimer’s patients are still in need of a lot of care, Chodos said. Of the 63 million caregivers in the United States, 27% report that their care recipient has Alzheimer’s, dementia or another memory-related impairment, according to the Caregiving in the US 2025 report from AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving.

“Caregivers need to be connected to all the resources and all these amazing community organizations that are there for them,” Chodos said. “They need to know they’re not alone.”

‘We’ve Been Surprised’

After Bryan’s father was diagnosed, his doctor went over treatment options. Her dad was a good candidate because he was diagnosed early, she said, and he drove himself to infusions every other week for 18 months. Bryan’s dad uses Leqembi, but the Alzheimer’s Association notes medications like Kisunla also target the underlying biology of the disease. Not every treatment works for every patient, and some patients will respond better or not respond at all to certain drugs. There are other medications that can help with dementia symptoms, but there aren’t any current medications that cure Alzheimer’s disease.

“I would say that we were hopeful, but we weren’t expecting the results that we received,” Bryan said.

Bryan said her dad, who is 79, has shown virtually no decline in those 18 months. Her family still notices his short-term memory challenges, but the disease doesn’t seem to have progressed, she said, and her dad hasn’t noticed any side effects from the infusions. He continues to help care for her children, drive himself, work with Seniors Helping Seniors and go to church. He’s recently reduced his infusions to once a month.

“Everyone else, like, with my grandmother and friends’ parents, 18 months, you can see a significant decline,” she said. “Really, we’ve been surprised.”

Chodos said patients on these medications typically still regress, but at a slower pace.

“The real goal, it would be to keep people in these very, very early stages with nearly no active disease progression forever,” Chodos said. “The hope is really that we can sort of freeze time a little bit where they were, maybe even help them improve some factors that would give them back some better function, like more exercise or better diet or better sleep, things like that.”

Preparing For What Comes Next

For Bryan, it’s been a huge relief. As a working mother with two children, she worried her dad’s diagnosis would add another stressor to her already busy life. But so far, life has gone on as normal. She attends some of his doctor’s appointments to take notes for her siblings, but otherwise her dad has remained independent.

“I expected I would have all these doctor’s appointments and go with him, but he just takes himself,” she said. “He comes over and walks my dog right after he gets his infusion.”

Bryan knows her dad won’t be independent forever. But the treatment is giving her time to start thinking about what life will look like when her parents do need more caregiving support. For many family caregivers, diagnoses are sudden and all-consuming. Bryan said she appreciates this time to prepare.

“You have to think about the financial piece. You also have to think about the physical care and the time that you want to spend with them,” she said. “It makes you realize that time is limited, and I want my children to get the most of the time with their grandparents.”

Madeline Mitchell’s role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.