--:-- Shamita Basu: Hey there, it's Shamita here. As you might know, along with hosting Apple News Today, I'm also the host of our weekly interview podcast, Apple News in Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Our latest episode is a story of Alzheimer's and one son's search for answers.
--:-- Sandeep Jauhar: For almost my entire life, my father, Prem Jahar, had been a scientist. One of his favorite statements to me growing up is, "non-science is nonsense."
--:-- Sandeep Jauhar: I remember my father spending long days in the lab, doing research and writing papers. He was a take-charge kind of guy, always striving to succeed. And he loved spending time with his family, his three kids. He'd cut fruit for us, that was like his thing.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That was sort of his love language. That's such a, like, Asian parent thing, too.
--:-- Sandeep Jauhar: So, so much. The play to cut fruit just pushed your weight.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But then around 2013, Sandeep started to notice some worrying changes in his father.
--:-- Sandeep Jauhar: At first, I wasn't sure what was going on. I would be puzzled that, Dad, you remember the partition of India. You remember the spelling bee where I won second place in fifth grade. But you don't remember what you had for lunch.
--:-- Sandeep Jauhar: More and more, it seemed like his father's mind wasn't what it used to be. He kept forgetting the code to the new safe that we bought. It was my mother's birth year, 1941. He kept telling him, "Dad, it's just mom's birthday. Come on."
--:-- Shamita Basu: Then one day, Sandeep was taking a walk with his mom when she told him something alarming. His father had gotten lost driving home from the local mall.
--:-- Sandeep Jauhar: And rather than calling me or my brother who lived nearby, he stopped the car on a busy road and tried to flag down passing cars to ask for directions.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I said, "Oh, that's not good." And then she stopped and said, "Do you think your father has Alzheimer's?"
--:-- Sandeep Jauhar: And that was the first time anyone in the family had even mentioned the word.
--:-- Shamita Basu: They made an appointment with a neurologist, and his mother's intuition was right. These were the first signs that Sandeep's father had Alzheimer's disease.
--:-- Sandeep Jauhar: It was the beginning of a years-long journey that I write about in my latest book, My Father's Brain, Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer's.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's an honest and unflinching portrayal of the challenges of caring for a sick parent, from doctor's appointments to disagreements about care with siblings, to coming to terms with how this particular illness was changing my father in ways I, as a cardiologist, even with all my medical training, didn't fully understand.
--:-- Sandeep Jauhar: When I look back at the level of knowledge I had about dementia and Alzheimer's, it was really lacking. And I've been to medical school. I've done rotations in neurology. I've done a residency and a fellowship. But I didn't really understand what Alzheimer's was about.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sandeep's book weaves between the intensely personal and the hard science. He told me it was important for him to learn exactly how Alzheimer's impacts the brain and why treatment has remained so elusive for so long.
--:-- Shamita Basu: My full conversation with Sandeep is out now. To find it, search for Apple News In Conversation in the podcast app.
--:-- [End of conversation]
