Maria Alanis lives in the Rio Grande Valley. She is part of what has come to be known as the sandwich generation. She's raising her children and caring for her mother, Isabel, who has had Alzheimer's disease for more than a decade. She's sandwiched in between. Maria told Public Health Watch health disparities reporter Raquel Torres that the evolution of her relationship with her mother has been difficult to bear.
"It depresses you to see how she changes, how your mother ends up being your daughter," Maria said.
Maria told Torres that being Isabel's primary caregiver can be a punishing job. It's full-time with little compensation. Maria works part-time at a home health company, which assigns her to work with her mother, but that pays her only about $200 a week after taxes. Maria told Torres it's also exhausting, and as Isabel's health and cognitive abilities deteriorate, she's sometimes violent.
"Maria has told me that there have been times when Isabelle hits her and she throws temper tantrums, and that can be very frustrating when it happens several times a day," Torres said.
There are few resources for Maria or Isabel in the Rio Grande Valley, Torres explained, making everything far more challenging than it might be elsewhere.
Torres did a thorough exploration of the mounting dementia crisis in the Rio Grande Valley in her Public Health Watch story, Alzheimer’s Continues to Afflict Texas’s Rio Grande Valley. Experts Say State Leaders Still Aren’t Doing Enough. She learned that Alzheimer's disease is a daunting challenge across Texas, and the Rio Grande Valley is at the epicenter. One in four people over 65 in Starr County is living with Alzheimer’s. That's 25% of the population over 65. But in South Texas, diagnosis, treatment, and support for patients and caregivers are difficult to come by.
"When I visited the region's only Memory Clinic at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in Harlingen, 600 people were on a wait list to see a neurologist at the clinic," Torres said. "Imagine that."
The backdrop of this scarcity in South Texas is a $3 billion proposal to fund what would be called the Dementia Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, which would then fund dementia research across Texas. It's modeled after the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, which, according to its annual report, has awarded well over three billion cancer research dollars to institutions across Texas. Voters will decide whether this proposal should be funded in November.
Torres said many of those she interviewed are thrilled with the proposal. More well-funded research into the causes and potential treatments for all dementias is desperately needed. It would also inject money into communities where DPRIT-funded research projects are happening. Will any of that money reach the Rio Grande Valley? Perhaps, though it's often forgotten in favor of the big Texas cities with established research centers, like San Antonio. Will it help Maria and Isabel Alanis? Not directly and not today. That is the rub, according to Torres.
"What happened in this session was that legislators failed to increase the budget for people living with dementia and their caregivers," she explained. The $2.71 million they approved for dementia care over the next year is less than 1/25th of what Florida will spend in 2025.
Torres spoke with Petrie Dish host Bonnie Petrie about her investigation into the Alzheimer's crisis in the Rio Grande Valley and reflected on what it was like to learn the intimate details of the lives of the people at the center of her story.
"The worst part about covering stories like this is knowing that Maria and Isabel will continue to live every day as the story describes until the end of Isabel's life," Torres said. "That's really the discrepancy between $3 billion in research and families suffering every day."
