For nearly two decades, I have worried about my friend Carlen Maddux. Carlen published some of my best work as a journalist for more than 20 years as the man behind the Maddux Business Report, a long-running Tampa Bay area magazine. Through every editor he hired (and fired) and at least two recessions, my byline was a constant on his masthead and I have an armload of awards to prove it. In 1997, his wife Martha, a beloved political figure here in St. Petersburg, was diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer’s Disease. She was just 50 years old and they had been married for 25 years. Their lives and those of their three children – as well as those of his employees – were never the same.
CARLEN MADDUX podcast excerpt: "I was like a sponge. Anything that could help us... I wanted to get Martha out of this. Even though the medical community said they they had not been able to find anything (to cure or treat Alzheimer's Disease), I still was hopeful we would stumble across something."Let me put this in a little context: Martha—and her family—inexplicably lived with Alzheimer’s for the next 17 years. It was a hard, unrelenting, soul-sapping existence that no one should have to endure, whether as a victim or helpless family member or friend. In the pages of his first book, A Path Revealed: How Hope, Love, and Joy Found Us Deep in a Maze Called Alzheimer’s, Carlen takes readers with him on globe-spanning religious journey to make peace with having his beloved partner ripped from his embrace way, way too soon.
CARLEN MADDUX podcast excerpt: "The majority of people diagnosed with Alzheimer's are over 65; my wife was 5o. When you talk about 'early onset,' that means somebody has been diagnosed with it under the age of 65... Our neurologist said (in 1997) that within 15 years there will be cocktail of medications that someone will take to stabilize and delay the onset of this. But as far as I can tell, research is no closer than it was in '97." Key interview moments:• 6:00 Carlen Maddux, author of A Path Revealed: How Hope, Love, and Joy Found Us Deep in a Maze Called Alzheimer’s, explains the definition of "early onset" Alzheimer's Disease, which struck his wife at age 50;
• 22:25 Maddux describes his desperate quest to find something--anything--that would help his wife beat Alzheimer's;
• 34:40 Although he spent his long career as a newspaper journalist (St. Petersburg Times) and business magazine publisher (Maddux Business Report), Maddux had never written a book before; here he explains how he learned to write his memoirs.
