Jan Chorlton: Losing Your Love To Alzheimer’s

Jan Chorlton Petersen was a beautiful, accomplished journalist. She worked for CBS News, CNN, Voice of America, and ABC News.  When she was in her 30’s she married Barry Petersen, a CBS News Correspondent.  Life was good and they traveled around the world. 

But Jan began to experience memory loss by the time she was 40 years old.  And by 55 years old she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.  Her husband, Barry Petersen became her caretaker and of course, he was devastated with the diagnosis.  There were clues early on with her behavior; the way she talked, and she couldn’t perform tasks such as shopping and cooking. 

Imagine the pain of marrying the love of your life and having it cut short with Alzheimer’s.  Barry has said “Jan loved me without measure. She was all I wanted in this life. It was a love affair that had a beginning but was never supposed to end. That is what this horror of a disease stole and destroyed.”

Barry Petersen wrote a book about his experience with Alzheimer’s:  as a caretaker, a grieving husband, and a researcher who did everything he could to learn about the disease and help Jan fight it as best as he could. Jan eventually went into an assisted living facility when Barry could no longer care for her.  We often forget about the toll it takes on loved ones. Barry’s pain was heartbreaking.

Jan Chorlton died in 2013.  She was only 63 years old.  Barry Petersen wrote a book called “Jan’s Story: Love Lost to the Long Goodbye of Alzheimer’s.” Barry Petersen has talked about his book in various forums.  The most poignant is his piece on CBS Morning where he talks about the journey of caring for his wife and living with the diagnosis.  

These stories are important because Alzheimer’s is a disease that is not going away.  As the population ages, especially “Baby Boomers,” we will see an increase in Alzheimer’s.  According to ALZ.org, by 2050, the number of people age 65 and older with Alzheimer’s dementia may grow to a projected 12.7 million. Early-onset Alzheimer’s is not as common.

When Jan Chorlton died, her loved ones asked that donations be made on her behalf to the lab of Dr. Jeffery Kelly at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. Dr. Jeffery Kelly won the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. The Breakthrough Prize Foundation is founded by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Yuri and Julia Milner, and Anne Wojcicki. 

Jeffery W. Kelly has made a difference in the lives of people suffering from amyloid diseases that affect the heart and nervous system. He showed the mechanism by which a protein, transthyretin, unravels and agglomerates into clusters that kill cells, tissues, and ultimately patients. He then conceived a molecular approach to stabilizing the protein, and after he synthesized a thousand candidate molecules, one of the designed molecules had the right structure to achieve this stabilization. He then helped develop it into an effective drug, named tafamidis, that significantly slows the progression of these diseases. In the process, he provided evidence for the notion that protein aggregation causes neurodegeneration, which has relevance for other neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease.