Lance Kocherhans wasn't especially surprised when his children told him they were worried about his memory.
It had never been razor sharp, he said good-naturedly. "I literally do not know the words to any songs, though I know the music to all of them." And his dad was diagnosed with dementia when he was about 80 and spent his last years in memory care.
He's a big fan of early intervention and of being realistic, so he went to see doctors and went through a battery of memory and skills tests.
The day the results of the PET scan came back, Kocherhans was alone in a hotel room in Montana, on a trip for his job selling medical devices. He looked online for his results and when he saw the words "consistent with Alzheimer's," he said that "I remember I kind of froze up, stuck my face in a pillow and screamed. I started to bawl. I was scared to death."
