Listening to Sue Dublin, a registered nurse and an early-stage Alzheimer’s patient, you wouldn’t know she has any disease at all. She speaks as naturally as any 54-year-old, surrounded by her dogs and a loving husband who cooks her meals.

The fact is—and she says this—many people suffering from Alzheimer’s understand the stigma of an ailment “normal” folks know little about. In Dublin’s case, her lapses of memory and inability to do certain things like go down an escalator, led to her diagnosis when she was 52.

Alzheimer’s doesn’t only affect oldsters. The main point of this piece is to show that every year larger numbers of younger people are being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. The only reason producer Jasmyn Belcher offers for this phenomenon is that there are more senior citizens—and semi-seniors like Dublin—around today than ever before.

In considering Dublin’s situation in central New York state, Belcher mentions that more retirees are settling there every year. She doesn’t examine the possibility that there may be something in the environment, something toxic in the water or in the soil for example, that may have to do with the increase in Alzheimer’s. This is, after all, not a piece about the possible environmental causes of Alzheimer’s.

Rather, it is a cutaway that gives a warm human voice to the disease. As such it’s valuable in spreading the word about something scary and unknown. Listening to Dublin is like hearing your sweet old auntie chat about her purple sweater.

If Alzheimer’s has a human face, you can almost see Sue Dublin's here.