Maria Shriver and the leaders behind this week’s Women’s Conference 2010 at the Long Beach Convention Center have brought the problem of Alzheimer’s Disease to the spotlight.  

It’s a problem that not only affects the people who are afflicted with the disease.  It also strikes out at the people who act as caregivers to the estimated 5.3 million people who suffer from Alzheimer’s.  

Lindi Ruan and Karen Peters battled Alzheimer’s as caregivers as they watched over their mothers, who were diagnosed with the disease.

Alzheimer’s made recent headlines when Shriver asserted that women are at the epicenter of the Alzheimer’s epidemic following the October release of The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Takes on Alzheimer's, a collaborative study by California’s First Lady and the Alzheimer’s Association.   

Tuesday night, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was among five women honored at the 2010 Minerva Awards during the closing ceremonies of the Women’s Conference, an annual forum to motivate and educate women in leadership. O’Connor retired from the Supreme Court to care for her husband who suffered from Alzheimer’s.  Even after her husband passed away last year, O’Connor has been an active spokesperson to find a cure for Alzheimer’s. She understood the stresses that come with being a caregiver.  

Both Ruan and her good friend Peters, knew first-hand how devastating Alzheimer’s can be.  Ruan’s mother has lived with the disease for eight years.  Peters’ mother-in-law lives now in a hospice care facility in the final stages of Alzheimer’s, and Peters’ mother passed away last year after a ten-year battle with the same disease.

“The hell goes on and on and on.  And that’s not something that anyone should have to experience,” said Peters, as she recounted her mother’s falls, broken bones and memory loss.

Though both men and women can develop Alzheimer’s, women are at a double disadvantage when you look at the numbers.   Women make up nearly two-thirds of those afflicted by Alzheimer’s and about 60 percent of the unpaid caregivers, according to an Alzheimer’s Association poll cited in a press release.

“And I think the impact on women in this country and around the world, really is absolutely devastating as a caregiver because [those women] typically don’t take care of themselves,” said Bettina Kurowski, CEO of the Southland chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.  

“They’re working, they’re caring for somebody 24/7,” she said, noting that premature death and disability is common.

Ruan and Peters were bound by a shared experience.  Both women remembered the moments of panic before their mothers were diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, when their mothers drove the car and couldn’t remember the way home.  They recalled the fear and frustration as they came to understand that over several years, they were losing their mothers, inch by excruciating inch. 

 “I sometimes would just want to say, ‘Snap out of it!’ because it was hard for me to see her like that,” Ruan said. 

Ruan’s eyes were brimming with tears as she remembered how she would lose patience, forgetting that Alzheimer’s was taking over.

“It was hard for me to realize it was really happening, and she was getting worse,” Ruan said.  There were moments when even her mother would have to acknowledge the grim reality of their lives.

 “And sometimes she would say, ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know anything.’” Ruan recalled.   

But Ruan also remembered her mother, Dorothy Harrison as she was before Alzheimer’s took hold.

Dorothy Harrison was just the all American mom, Ruan said.  Her mother was a “Rosie the Riveter,” one of the many women who built airplanes during World War II for Douglas.  Her daughter remembered a classy lady, who with her husband raised their family in Long Beach. 

After the war, Mrs. Harrison was the kind of stay-at-home mom who would host overnight sleepovers for her daughter and her girlfriends from school.  

And Ruan’s friend, Peters, reminisced about her own mother, Millie Keye before she died in 2009.  Peters remembered her mom loved to ice skate and dance.  Keye was a woman who was full of life, always there for her children and grandchildren, Peters said.  

Both women wiped away tears as they choked through their stories of their mothers, but they were still motivated to fight against the disease.   They celebrated Ruan’s 53rd birthday by raising money for the Alzheimer’s Association.  

By last Sunday, Ruan, Peters and their friends raised $1,825.  

 “I told them this is what I want for my birthday,” Ruan said.  “I feel blessed to have such great friends,” she said, smiling through her tears.