There are millions of stories in the vast and growing Alzheimer's universe. Jacqueline Marcell's is just one of them. But what a story it is. 

Her best-selling and Book-of-the-Month Club selection Elder Rage: Take My Father ? Please (How To Survive Caring for Aging Parents) is at once blood-curdling and heart-warming, dispiriting and uplifting, a gripping page-turner and well-informed self-help guide. It was prompted by her struggle to help her mother and father, who were both finally diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease but not before more than a decade of heartache that culminated in a hellish year out of her life.

Elder Rage was published in 2001. But it is even more relevant six years later as Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia work their way deeper into the public consciousness while the population ages and Boomers deal with ailing parents and even begin to contract the disease themselves.

Over those six years, Marcell has become nothing less than a force of nurture in the world of Alzheimer's care-giving, a one-woman band dedicated to educating people about how to deal with Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.

"Education is paramount," she says over the phone from Irvine, Calif., where she lives and practises her new life's work, a totally unintended consequence for the former TV executive and college professor. "We could save the country an enormous amount of money, time, tears, heartaches and absolute misery [by spreading the word about Alzheimer's care and diagnosis]."

Marcell does her considerable bit through a radio program, syndicated column, lectures, TV appearances, blogs and a Web site (www.elderrage.com). More than five million Americans have the disease now and that might grow to 12 million by 2050, by which time it will be costing US$350-billion a year to treat.
Daunting, yes, but not necessarily overwhelming. After all, Marcell says, Elder Rage is about how she made her parents' lives better despite her "rageaholic," Jekyll-and-Hyde father and health and social systems that Kafka might have appreciated.

And some progress is being made as the medical establishment works feverishly on Alzheimer's treatments despite lower funding from government. Only 12 years after the first Alzheimer's drug was introduced, there are 23 new drugs in clinical trials, Marcell says, and a dozen of them show great promise in helping to slow the disease.

But it is still not clear what causes the disease and, barring a major breakthrough on the cure front, diagnosing, treating and care-giving will be where progress must be made.

"It first falls on the spouse," Marcell says. "Then it falls on the adult children. Then they try to find a care-giver. But most people can't afford 24/7 care."
That's where long-term care insurance comes in. She says it's vital. At 57 and knowing her parents' Alzheimer's history, she has the insurance and she eats well and exercises, too.

Yet she is a realist. "I know what to do at the first sign of short-term memory loss. I know what to look for and I know not to delay. I know how to delay the progression of it in all the ways possible. And I know there are doctors to go to."

One major problem in Alzheimer's treatment, though, is a shortage of doctors to go to. Marcell says there are fewer geriatrics specialists practising in the United States now than there were eight years ago when she started looking into Alzheimer's and its treatment.

"Geriatrics is the lowest-paid specialty," she says. "If you're a medical student in your 20s, do you want to deal with bouncing babies or heart disease where you can do something about it? Or do you want to deal with elderly people and their afflictions from head to toe and their siblings and spouses and kids? Every patient you have dies on you no matter what you do. Gee, what would you pick if you were in your 20s?"

Furthermore, though the Boomers have largely stepped up to the plate and taken care of their parents, they can't expect their children to do the same for them. "They have been spoiled since Day 1," she says.

"They have a whole different experience of life. They're not going to be a care-giving generation and they're heading into an era where there are going to be more elderly people than at any other time in history."

Meantime, Marcell says there's still a great deal of denial about Alzheimer's among people who prefer not to recognize its early signs in parents or spouses. "No one gets it till it hits their loved one. Then they start to get it."

Jacqueline Marcell got it when she tackled her parents' problem head-on almost 10 years ago. Today, her mission is to get other people to get it, to make a difference.

"You can do something to delay Alzheimer's. We're blessed to be living when we're living because there are things that can be done."