This is fresh air, I'm Tery Gross. It seems like most people know someone who has Alzheimer's or

another form of dementia, a grandparent parent spouse, partner, friend. For my guest, Dr. Sandeep Jajar,

it was his father, who had Alzheimer's, it was also his mother, who had a form of dementia caused

by Parkinson's disease. Dr. Jajar's new memoir, My Father's Brain, is about witnessing his parents'

dementia from his perspective as a doctor, a son, sibling, and caregiver. There were several times

Dr. Jajar, his sister and his brother, who was also a doctor, disagreed about the best treatment

for their parents, including when the time was right for hospice and when to let their father go.

Dr. Jajar also writes about his quest to understand his father's brain and the brains of other

patients afflicted with dementia. He says, dementia remains the only chronic and widespread medical

scourge for which there are no effective treatments. Dr. Jajar is the director of the Heart Failure

Program at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. He was born in India and immigrated to the US with

his family when he was eight. They were allowed in under a new immigration law, under the category

of scientists and academics of exceptional ability. His father was a scientist who ran a wheat

genetics lab and was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Sandeep Jajar, welcome to Fresh Air. It's great to have you back again and it's a book I think

will help a lot of people. Alzheimer's isn't just a memory disease and its final stage at

leads to death. Can you explain why? Well, Alzheimer's ravages the brain, as you know. I mean,

it causes degeneration in many different parts of the brain. One of the goals for me in understanding

my father's journey and my journey through my father's illness was to understand what exactly

happens in the brain because, you know, as a caregiver, the times I was most frustrated was when

my father seemed to behave in ways that were, you know, just totally irrational or just

sort of evaded my understanding, my comprehension. So one of the things that I learned, you know,

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