Why I Run... for Athletes to End Alzheimer's

Part two of two of the nail-biting series explaining why I'm running the marathon for two charities: Athletes to End Alzheimer's.

Soon after I started dating my now-husband, a devastatingly handsome gentleman named Pete, his mother, Carolyn, was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's disease at the age of 51.  At the time, I didn't really know what that meant - I had only met his mother a few times and she seemed pretty healthy to me.  Over the course of the next eight years, I witnessed her disease progress, slowly at first, but eventually at a much quicker pace.  After using in-home care for a number of months, Pete's family made the difficult decision to move Carolyn into a nursing home in 2011.

Watching my boyfriend, then my fiance, then my husband interact with his mother as she slipped further away has been heartbreaking and uplifting at the same time.  I hate that he has essentially lost his mother at such a young age (for them both) and that I will never really have a relationship with my mother-in-law.  But then we'll visit her and he'll make her laugh, or she'll lock eyes with me and I know she recognizes me as one of her People, and I see that he does still have a mother, and I do have a mother-in-law.

When it came time for me to choose a charity to run the marathon for, Athletes to End Alzheimer's was the obvious choice.  I have often felt helpless, not knowing what to say to Pete or his family during the rough times, but running and raising money for research is a concrete way of doing something.  There are advances in Alzheimer's research and treatments every day, and though they may not directly help my mother-in-law, I have faith that they will help many other families fight this disease.

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