1. If they can find it early, they can track its course and see how it developes. That may allow better research to find ways to slow it down or stop it.
2. If you know what's coming, you can plan. My mother has Alzheimer's. Until she stopped talking she denied it. That meant she fought everything done to make her life safer. She had to drive herself to the doctor--even if going off course by a block meant she had no idea where she was. She did truly foolish things--and had no idea that they were foolish, and resented to the point of death threats anybody that tried to diminish her independence.
If she knew this a decade in advance, she might have made preparations for it.
3. It helps those around you. My father committed suicide. It was a long time coming.
My mother pushed away me and my wife by doing idiotic things to and with our pre-school son. "I yelled at him at told him to go play outside." "Ma, it's 9:30 pm, you have no front yard to speak of, and we don't see him." "Well, that's his fault." We found him down the block in a parking lot, running in circles from the parking lot into the street and back into the parking lot.
My mother constantly accused my father of trying to steal her money. Of wanting to sell the house and run off with his girlfriends. Of doing everything possible to make her life miserable--they didn't go out any more, and hadn't gone anywhere for months. (They went out to a movie and dinner weekly--but none of their friends would get near them in public.)
After she'd made his life misery and she was delusional, after he was told that we'd never visit them again so he'd have to see his grandson at a park or something when we visited their city, after she started going through their phone list and called everybody to say he was cheating on her ...
Finally one day she started calling the police on him when he went to the store and came home. "Police--arrest this stranger. He left me 50 years ago and now he's trying to steal everything I have." She started telling the neighbors that he was a thief and brought his girlfriend home to *her* house, not his.
He got the diagnosis from her doctor that she had Alzheimer's. After years of making his life hell, he knew he'd have to take her to court to deal with her and he couldn't do it. He spent a week getting the house in order--cleaned the poor, trimmed the trees, got the cars gased up and tuned up, paid bills, replaced all the batteries in the smoke detectors. Then after dinner one Saturday he did dishes after dinner and went to the garage. He lay down on the garage floor, held the gun he'd bought a few months prior, and killed himself.
The next day I found out how far the Alzheimer's had gone, and two weeks later I had to file for custody of my mother. During this time a dozen times a day she told me about finding the body, and how it was the happiest day of her life. Then saw the court forms I was filling out, understood enough about what they were for, ripped them up and grabbed a knife and threatened to kill me.
Next day I filed the forms. The day after that I drove my father's SUV back 1200 miles to where I lived. Thing is, once I had custody it was a nightmare. Everything I did she fought--she'd argue that the court orders were forgeries and she had no idea who I was--some con man trying to take her money. It took *months* to get everything squared away and to get somebody in to help her. By that time she'd lost 30 pounds. She almost went crazy when her tv broke--she had changed a setting on the remote and couldn't figure out how it worked. "On" and "off" she could handle, but change a channel ...
During all of this my mother's twin had end-stage breast cancer. While worrying about her own health and how it would affect her own family she had to deal with my mother calling and ranting about my father, me, my brother. She had to figure out what was going on, because she was first in line for property power of attorney and health power of attorney. Until the court weighed in--and that took over 6 months--she'd be the one making the decisions. She had to relinquish both, so somebody else could handle my mother's decisions using what turns out to be very weak authority granted in a standard POA.
My brother's wife had breast and bone cancer. A year after my father committed suicide, she died. My brother was close to insanity, trying to deal with my mother and his wife. Because nobody saw Alzheimer's coming. My mother was just acting "strange." The stress, the abuse, it didn't make sense--then it was a burden for my brother to try to work around her intransigence and tirades to make sure she was safe. As his wife was dying.
A decade's warning: My mother could have made choices. We would have known what was happening. Steps could have been taken ahead of time to deal with her symptoms and get everything arranged for when she wasn't able to make decisions or when her decisions were always horrible. We could have had a way of dividing up duties so that no one person was alone and depressed enough to commit suicide, family members dealing with their own personal end of life issues or those of their loved ones would have known what was going on and could let others know.
Your post says that the only person of any importance in the diagnosis is the patient, and the only thing of any use is prevention. I think that's wrong in a lot of ways, unless you live alone, have nothing, have no family, no job, and no friends or people who rely on you or who care about you.
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