The signs were there, but Esai Morales didn't pick up on them at first.
His mother angrily accused a friend of stealing her jewelry, when she'd merely misplaced it. She put a carton of milk in the kitchen cupboard. She began repeating the same questions over and over.
It wasn't until his mother left a pot unattended and it boiled over on the stove that the reality hit Morales. His mother was losing her memory. A visit to the doctor confirmed it. Her diagnosis: Alzheimer's disease.
Morales, a New York actor who's appeared in dozens of movies and TV shows, suddenly found himself thrust into a real-life drama, and his story is now being told in a way that's helping other families better understand and cope with Alzheimer's.
Morales and his mother are the subjects of Alzheimer's Xplained, an innovative digital storybook that seeks to demystify the disease by walking readers through the experiences of a family living with it.
"It was great for him to be able to tell his story to us," says Dr. Kim Chilman-Blair, founder and president Medicine X, the company behind Alzheimer's Xplained. "He's in the public view and he's able to use his celebrity status to create awareness of this condition, especially for families who are dealing with it."
Chilman-Blair, a New Zealand physician, launched Medicine X out of a desire to make complicated medical conditions more understandable to those who are facing them. She points to statistics showing that only one-fourth of patients understand their diagnosis.
Dr. Kim Chilman-Blair
"Doctors learn a lingo at medical school and become so socialized in that way of speaking, they don't speak the same language as patients," she says. "There's a disconnect between what doctors say and what people hear. Unless we provide tools to break down that medical mumbo jumbo, they are never going to be able to understand it properly."
The ideal tool, Chilman-Blair decided, was storytelling.
Alzheimer's Xplained uses colorful illustrations and simple, conversational text to follow the journey of Morales and his mother as she descends into dementia.
"Storytelling has been used throughout the ages to communicate all sorts of complicated information," Chilman-Blair says. "We're taking Esai's story, going from when his mother was a strong person and a pillar of strength for him to watching as Alzheimer's slowly affects her memory and her personality. We use that as the backbone of the story, but throughout the story, we explain the medical information as well."
Morales, whose acting career has included starring roles in NYPD Blue and the Netflix series Ozark, serves as the narrator of the story. He walks readers through how his mother was diagnosed, and explains the "plaques" and "tangles" that are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.
In other parts of the story, he frankly discusses the emotional impacts of the disease. He talks about his own fears that he might get Alzheimer's, and the overwhelming burden of caregiving that fell on him and his family as his mother's condition worsened.
Alzheimer's Xplained takes readers along on the journey as Esai Morales and his mother deal with her diagnosis.
Chilman-Blair says when Medicine X approaches a topic like Alzheimer's, it begins with a team of in-house doctors roughing out the "skeleton" of the story. That is then passed on to script-writers and illustrators who turn it into a storybook. Each story is reviewed by medical authorities before being released to the public.
She says Alzheimer's was one of the first topics she chose to take on, in part because of her own personal experience with it.
"Alzheimer's was particularly close to my heart, because I lost my own grandmother to Alzheimer's disease and I watched my father go through the process of trying to understand, and not being able to," Chilman-Blair says. "She was already gone, and that was very difficult for him, not being able to understand why."
She says when she showed her father the Alzheimer's Xplained storybook, "a lightbulb went off and he could suddenly understand why and how these things happen, and the frustration of caregivers. He said, 'I wish something like this had been available for me.'"
Medicine X has set up a private Facebook community for families dealing with Alzheimer's, and it currently has more than 7,000 members. "It's a place where people can go and ask doctors questions, but also more importantly, they can meet others who are going through the same circumstances," Chilman-Blair says.
Medicine X was launched in Australia, and within the past year, established an office in Malibu, California. In addition to Alzheimer's Xplained, it also has produced storybooks on the topics of migraines and diabetic gastroparesis, and it's preparing to launch additional storybooks on such conditions as macular degeneration and Crohn's disease.
Its storybooks are given away free to the public, and Alzheimer's Xplained can be downloaded at www.AlzheimersXplained.com.
Chilman-Blair says she considered offering the books for sale, but she wanted to make the information as widely available as possible, and was concerned some families might not be able to afford the books. So she is pursuing a business model where funding comes from pharmaceutical companies or other revenue sources. Alzheimer's Xplained was funded by the drug-maker Allergan.
Chilman-Blair says Alzheimer's Xplained is being distributed in a variety of means.
"The way most people get it is through social media," she says. "We share links and they share it with other people, so it gets shared organically."
The storybook also is being provided to physicians, who give it to their patients. In addition, Medicine X has a relationship with the Alzheimer's Foundation of America to make the storybook available to patients and their families.
Charles J. Fuschillo Jr., president and CEO of the Alzheimer's Foundation of America, says the partnership fits nicely with his organization's mission to raise greater awareness around Alzheimer's and empower people through knowledge about the disease.
"Using a creative storytelling format to provide relatable, easy to understand information about Alzheimer's disease, its symptoms, and available support resources will help raise awareness, increase understanding and potentially make a difference for others if Alzheimer's enters their lives," he says.
Chilman-Blair's ultimate goal is to grow Medicine X into a resource that anyone dealing with a medical condition can turn to.
"We want to be the go-to place for information about any condition," she says. "That's our ultimate, 100-year plan, to cover thousands of conditions and treatments. We just want to demystify medicine and make it understandable to people."
And she'll continue to use a storybook format to achieves that.
"Everyone is human; we all respond to storytelling," she says. "It's so much more powerful."
Tony Dearing may be reached at tdearing@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyDearing. Find NJ.com on Facebook.