This love story offered a moving glimpse at scourge of Alzheimer’s
Many in Connecticut and beyond were taken by the story of Peter Marshall.
We were captivated by the love story he played a role in, as he remarried Lisa, his wife of 11 years, in a love-filled 2021 ceremony attended by many family members and friends.
This ceremony was special not only because it reaffirmed the couple’s love, as they danced and kissed like any delighted pair might do, but also because it took place two years after Peter Marshall was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s.
“It was just magical — straight out of a fairy tale,” Lisa Marshall told The Washington Post after the wedding.
Lisa Marshall also told The Post she had decided her mantra would be not to have regrets. She lived this as she worked to give her husband “a beautiful life” from the beginning, through when he asked her to marry him — not recalling that they already were married — and as his condition declined terribly in recent months.
It wasn’t easy, as The Courant’s Lori Riley reported after Marshall’s recent death.
Riley noted that Marshall ran the Hartford Marathon in 2016 (and a race in each of the state’s 169 towns) but five years later, struggled to walk a familiar 3-mile loop. Then, Marshall couldn’t walk down the stairs, and a hospital bed was installed in the front room. Hospice was there to help, Riley reported.
Riley also noted that she had known
Lisa and Peter Marshall were struggling and that many days were frustrating and infuriating and exhausting for Lisa Marshall.
Lisa always wanted her husband and her life back, but she always looked at the disease through the prism that it was Alzheimer’s talking or acting a certain way, not her husband, Riley reported.
While the story of the love they shared drew many to the story of the Marshalls, the couple was not alone in the struggle of coping with Alzheimer’s.
According to the Alzheimer’s Association, there were about 6.2 million Americans age 65 and older living with Alzheimer’s dementia in 2021. Further, older Black Americans and older Hispanic Americans are about 2 and 1.5 times, respectively, as likely to have Alzheimer’s or other dementias as older white Americans, the association reports, and discrimination is a barrier to Alzheimer’s and dementia care.
By 2050, the number of people age 65 and older with Alzheimer’s dementia “may grow to a projected 12.7 million,” according to the association.
And 11 million Americans were providing unpaid care for loved ones and others with Alzheimer’s and other dementias, according to the association.
That is a lot of people upon whom this terrible disease makes an impact.
But while the human impact is startling in its broadness, the financial impact also is growing.
In 2021, Alzheimer’s and other dementias were expected to cost the United States about $355 billion, including $239 billion in Medicare and Medicaid payments combined, the association reported. “Unless a treatment to slow, stop or prevent the disease is developed, in 2050, Alzheimer’s is projected to cost more than $1.1 trillion (in 2021 dollars),” a “dramatic rise,” the association reports. Part of this is government spending under Medicare and Medicaid.
Between the human impact and the financial impact, the scourge of Alzheimer’s spares few.
Lisa Marshall created a Facebook page, “Oh Hello, Alzheimer’s,” that told the story of living with a loved one with early-onset Alzheimer’s. More than 24,000 people follow the page.
On it, she is honest about her grief, “the waves. They crash in when I least expect it,” she wrote.
She is honest that she is “relieved for Peter mostly, that he is no longer suffering” while also noting that he “has been gone a long time.”
This honesty, along with their love story, offered the public a glimpse into the many costs Alzheimer’s brings and for this we should be thankful to Lisa Marshall.
It’s a window that is hard to look through but one that all Americans should see.