I think for my mother and for her family, the whole family was very important.

You know, she was very kind to us and she was very loving and very warm.

I think a lot of my warmth I get from her.

That's Nancy Wexler.

She's a professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University.

One morning in the late 1960s, something strange happened to her mother, Leonore Wexler.

She was 53 at the time.

Mom was on jury duty, crossing a great big street in Los Angeles.

You know, eight o'clock in the morning, very well dressed, very well kept.

And the policeman just screamed at her and said, you know, aren't you ashamed of yourself

being drunk so early in the morning?

And she realized that her unsatagate was one of the very first signs of.

She called my dad in a panic and said, I think this horrible thing is happening.

And she was diagnosed that afternoon with Huntington's disease is a horrible thing, a fatal

neurological disorder.

Huntington affects every aspect of mind thinking and body.

It causes all kinds of uncontrollable movements throughout your body, your face, wiggles,

your arms move.

And then also people very often have very severe depression, hallucinations, delusions,

paranoia, obsessive-compulsive disorders, and also cognitive problems.

So difficulty, thinking, remembering, executive functioning, you know, so every aspect really

of mind and body and thought.

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