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Editor's Blog: Winning The War On Alzheimer's

(CBS) The last time someone asked my mother's father how old he was before his heart stopped beating as he lay in his twin-sized electronic hospital bed at the nursing home, he told them he was 48.

He was really 80.

He died just one year, three months and four days after his wife passed from complications of heart disease, but he had actually lost her – and most of us, too, for that matter – a long time before his own body gave out.

On August 11, it will be three years since my grandfather, whom we all called "pop-pop," died, his body thinned, his bones weakened like a newborn, his mind trapped somewhere in the 1970s, tangled in the exhaust of the Alzheimer's that claimed the minds and, ultimately, lives of him and his three sisters.

It's not often that more than a couple of days go by without me wondering if, in my old age, I'll be denied enjoying the beautiful life I hope my hard work will have earned for me by then. Without wondering if I'll be sentenced to a dingy nursing home, complaining about the pain and fear I'll feel to a group of unfamiliar faces that belong to members of my immediate family.

This week, doctors in Britain announced what they believe to be a major breakthrough in helping significantly slow the saddening and maddening effects of Alzheimer's Disease, the one ailment that I fear more than any other.

They say it's the biggest advance against the disease in more than a century. They say it slows down the disgusting, disturbing and distressing progression of the disease by bringing the "worst-affected parts of the brain functionally back to life." They say it's more than twice as effective as any other treatment.

Good.

Anyone who has had to watch a loved one suffer from the memory-zapping effects of Alzheimer's will have their own story. There are so many to tell. To cry about. To wish they could forget, too. And as memories about the life of their loved one fade away by the day, they are replaced by recollections of their loved one's neurological torture.

My grandfather thought there were two of my grandmother in the year before she died. He thought the Marcia that woke up next to him each morning was an intruder. Yes, he'd tell us, he knew that was Marcia. He knew that was his wife. But he'd say she wasn't the real Marcia. He'd frantically demand to know where the real Marcia was.

It didn't matter how much you tried to make him understand. He just could not make the connection. His mind had already disconnected perception from reality.

He'd call my mother and ask about the real Marcia quite often. He'd tell his favorite stories of her. He'd recall the old days like it was the present day. Because, well, to him, it was.

How mom kept her sanity was beyond me. She'd already been dealing enough with the deteriorating health of my grandmother. But she is amazing like that. I guess you have to be.

Because how many of us could really sit there and not lose our own minds as we watch the people we care about the most lose theirs? How many children could bear to watch their parents struggle to recall how they knew them? How many husbands and wives could keep a straight face when their spouses forget their first kiss or the moment they had fallen in love?

The things in life that we cherish and promise ourselves we'll hold onto forever, the things we say we'll never forget – turns out we might not have a say in the matter.

I breathe much easier when I hear of such breakthroughs in medicine. They give me a little more hope.

More hope that maybe I won't forget my life and the perfect cast of family and friends who will have provided me an endless album of memories. More hope that maybe the life I hope I will have worked hard for doesn't have to be retold to me as if someone is reading me the biography of a person who sounds only vaguely familiar.

But most of all, more hope that my relatives won't have to suffer through my Alzheimer's the way my grandfather's family did. The way countless other families have.

And that's the scary part. All I can do – all any of us can do – is hope. And keep making more beautiful memories.

For more information on Alzheimer's Disease and how you can help fight the battle against it, click here.

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