"A devastating disease": Texas voters to decide on $3B state-run dementia fund in upcoming election
HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Accompanied by her husband and daughter, Wendy Rosenthal took part in a Zumba class at the Jewish Community Center in Houston for her 60th birthday.
Only she didn't know it was her birthday. Wendy, a former bookseller, is now in a full-time memory care unit and suffers from frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a rare form of a disease that strips away the brain's basic functions like speech, recognition, and memory.
"I first noticed something was wrong when she was losing the meaning for certain things, like a salt shaker or chair, or pen. It's kind of progressed now to where she just doesn't understand anything that I'm telling her or asking her. It's been hell," Lowell Rosenthal, Wendy's husband and longtime caregiver, said.
Wendy is one of more than six million Americans, the National Institute for Health (NIH) reports, who are living with some form of dementia. The deadly disease, which includes Alzheimer's, has no cure and limited treatment options. In Texas, more than 500,000 people currently live with some form of dementia, and another 1.1 million Texans serve as unpaid caretakers for victims, according to state health data.
https://abc13.com/post/voters-will-decide-3-billion-fund-geared-towards-dementia-patients-caretakers-texas-2025-election/18096055/