ELUSIVE HOPE

Two doors down, a patient carries a tune like a piano falling down a stairwell. But in this room a woman lies quietly, tightly curled up on her bed, self-swaddled in a blue blanket so that even her head can’t be seen, seemingly afraid of whatever she might see.

“How are you?” nurse Alma Angeles cheerfully asks the blanketed figure. Silence. “I sure hope you’re having a good day,” Angeles adds. More silence, but then the patient lets out an audible breath that she apparently was holding.

It’s midday on 2 South at University Medical Center, where emergency mental health patients are placed until they can be transferred to an appropriate facility.

The woman swaddled in the blanket, who pulls her cover even tighter, has been diagnosed by UMC physicians with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, a degenerative brain disorder that steals memory. She arrived at the hospital about four months ago without identification and without the ability to ID herself.

Unlike others with Alzheimer’s and those with assorted other mental problems who temporarily end up here, as many as 15 a year, this woman wasn’t found wandering the streets.

She is an example, hospital officials say, of a phenomenon common enough to be given a name –– “granny dumping” — in The Review-Journal presents a series this week about Alzheimer’s disease and its impact on society, today and potentially in the future.

The prevalence of the disease and efforts by families to cope with it and by researchers to treat and cure it

The financial impact of the disease on families and society

Challenges for those who choose to care for their loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease at home

Alternative forms of care, from day care to assisted living and nursing homes

Identification and treatment of Alzheimer’s

Debate about the benefits of testing for Alzheimer’s

The state of Alzheimer’s research and what is needed in the future