Alzheimer's Toll on Women.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth

Of all the health care problems women confront, from birth control to breast cancer to heart disease, perhaps the most dramatic, and least talked about, is Alzheimer's.

Because women live longer than men, they are more likely to get Alzheimer's. Women make up 72 percent of the population' over the age of eighty-five, and nearly one-half of this group has Alzheimer's. Women are also much more likely to care for a family member who comes down with Alzheimer's-related dementia.

Eighty percent of those caring for a relative with Alzheimer's at home are wives, daughters, and other women who provide the care for free. According to the Alzheimer's Association, the total annual value of this "invisible" care is $196 billion. That dwarfs the combined cost of nursing home care ($32 billion) and paid home care ($83 billion).

A unique effort in Wisconsin by the university and state government to diagnose patients early and connect families with the support they need could provide a model for policymakers in Washington. Early diagnosis is important because new drugs can slow the progress of the disease. And some kind of comprehensive effort to help patients and caregivers is becoming more and more urgent.

Dr. Mark Sager, director of the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Institute Department of Medicine, explains: "Very few people actually have long-term care insurance. So this is one of the few examples of health care in our country where we really don't have a safety net. Most women who are caregivers for husbands, for example, will impoverish themselves until they reach the eligibility limit for Medicaid. Only then will they become eligible for home and institutional care."

Mary Pike is one of those wives and mothers who unexpectedly became a full-time caregiver when her husband developed Alzheimer's. When she could no longer care for him at home, she moved her husband to Manor Care nursing home in Madison, Wisconsin, where she visits him twice a day.

This isn't how she imagined spending her retirement. She and her husband, Bob, a World War II veteran who once managed a truck company, loved to go camping and to travel. They visited their four children on trips to South America and Japan. In 1992, they were on a trip to Finland when Bob inexplicably got lost. Soon, other bizarre symptoms appeared. Bob Pike got his days and nights confused. He told Mary he wanted to go home when he was already at home.

It took the family almost a year to realize Bob fit the profile...