Greg O'Brien

Today I’m getting even with Alzheimer’s—not for me, but for you, your families, and for all those who will face this demon prowling like Abaddon. Braced with the stinging diagnosis, I chose muscle memory over pity and shaking my fist at God. Instinctively, I began taking notes, more than a thousand pages of them, detailing memories, the progression of my mother’s disease, and my own walk. As a journalist for more than three decades, my gut, my muscle memory, guided me in writing On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer’s, the story of an investigative reporter imbedded in the mind of the disease, chronicling while he can the progression of this monster, a book about living with Alzheimer’s, not dying with it. The death part comes later.

All the darkness in the world, my mother taught me, cannot snuff out a single candle. I know the darkness. It’s a place I call Pluto, in allegorical terms, a reference from my early day as an investigative reporter at the Arizona Republic when I went deep “off-the-record” with sources. “We’re heading out to Pluto,” I would say, “where no one can see you or can hear what is said...”