re: How is Pat Summitt doing these days?

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The last I heard she wasn't doing great.

A friend of mine was her waitress recently and she said someone she was with ordered her meal for her.

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I def. believe you. In fact, I was tap dancing around this because it's hard for me to accept but it's true. However, her bad days are pretty bad, worse than they were. She still has good days though which is fairly common with Alzheimer's.

I mentioned earlier that the younger you are DX'd the more rapidly it tends eats you up. What I left out, maybe for my own sake, is there's some evidence that while intelligence keeps it at bay longer, once it develops intelligence hurts. Since the brain develops over a lifetime of use, the neural pathways which tend to be more complicated, developed, as well s numerically a great deal more than in those who aren't as intelligent (or at least less educated/prone to develop them) serve Alzheimer's when it hits. Think of it as providing a thorough transportation system for the illness. BUT use it or lose it is truer than we thought, especially when these pathways are forming.

There's little doubt Summit was/is highly intelligent and a fantastic strategist/chessmaster so the theory makes a great deal of sense. Again that's just some evidence from legit studies not proof (that takes even more studies and a lot more consensus in a frictious scientific community) but it does look to work that way more often than not and we also know for certain that the earlier the DX the more rapid the decline on average.

I just hope and pray she's the exception. Far too young for this, imnsho (and FWIW I'd say that about anyone).