The real estate mogul speaks candidly about the challenges of caregiving, the frightening familial history of the disease and the freeing feeling of advance testing
By Sharon Jayson, AARP Published October 04, 2024
When Barbara Corcoran decided it was time to speak out about the way Alzheimer’s disease shaped her family’s life, it was no surprise that she was all in.
Corcoran, the fast-talking extrovert who doesn’t mince words on ABC’s Shark Tank, had been silent about her mother Florence’s struggles with the disease and how Corcoran and her nine siblings took charge of their mother’s care. They grew up with their grandmother (Florence’s mother) living with the family. She also had Alzheimer’s. Florence’s four brothers were later diagnosed with the disease and died from it as well.
“It was like having an 11th child for my mother — and five times more work,” Corcoran says. “We all pitched in and cared for [my grandmother]. So it was not foreign to us. We knew what it was about and what to expect.”
Or so they thought.
Florence Corcoran was diagnosed in 2003 and died nine years later at age 87. During that time, the siblings divided care responsibilities based on their skills. One sister was a dementia nurse and worked at a care facility in New Jersey where Florence spent her final years. Another sister lived in Florida across the street from Corcoran’s parents, so after the diagnosis, the siblings asked her to quit her job and paid her for four years to be a caregiver for their parents. A brother took classes in Alzheimer’s care and learned techniques to deal with patients experiencing cognitive issues.
“Everyone had something to do. It was really a fortunate situation for all of us,” Corcoran says of their initial caregiving plan, thinking “we had all the bases covered.”
But Corcoran says none of them recognized the subtle symptoms a few years into their mother’s diagnosis when she became restless, anxious and verbally aggressive.
“It didn’t sound like her…. It just wasn’t the mother that we had grown up with,” Corcoran says. “I wish I had known then to ask a few questions or talk to a doctor.”
Corcoran hopes to help an estimated 11 million family caregivers for those with Alzheimer’s dementia better understand the symptoms of agitation so common with the disease. Along with sharing her family’s personal experiences a dozen years after her mother’s death from the disease, Corcoran has become the paid spokeswoman for the “I Wish I Knew” national public education campaign launched last week by two global health care and pharmaceutical companies in collaboration with Corcoran.
“It takes some time, believe it or not, after you lose a loved one to Alzheimer’s, to really simmer down. That’s the best word for it, simmer down,” she says, explaining why it took more than a decade since her mother’s death to talk about her family’s caregiving experiences.
The Recognize Alzheimer’s Agitation website has more specific information regarding agitation from Alzheimer’s. According to the National Institute on Aging, Alzheimer’s disease is a brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills before impeding an individual’s ability to continue with normal daily life. Symptoms often first appear in the mid-60s. Some estimates suggest that more than 6 million Americans (mostly 65 or older) may have the disease. Onset can occur from age-related brain changes. The National Institutes of Health says causes probably include a mix of these brain changes with genetic, environmental and lifestyle factors.
Corcoran, an entrepreneur who founded her real estate company, the Corcoran Group, in 1973 and sold it in 2001 for $66 million, is instantly recognizable because of her own branding as an investment guru, podcaster, TV personality and author. She says the fear of being diagnosed with the memory-related disease that so gripped her family has been a constant through her life.
“Truthfully, I thought I had Alzheimer’s every day of my life. I looked for signs,” she says. “I did exactly what a lot of people do. I refused to confront it. I figured it might go away. You know, if I had it, it might go away if I just ignore it and keep going on. But that’s not how dementia works.”
This year before she turned 75, around the age her mother was when she was diagnosed, Corcoran went to a doctor for a battery of tests for Alzheimer’s.
“He gave me a clean bill of health, and I even left there half-believing him,” she says. “I just couldn’t trust a positive result, because I had spent so many years being afraid.”
The Alzheimer’s doctor told her to leave her worries with him and come back in a year for another round of tests. That gesture, she says, was freeing.
“He said, ‘I’ll do full testing again. But between now and then, let me worry for you.’ And I accepted that. And you know, it was great because I went home. I thought, Good, somebody’s watching my worry. Of course, it’s ridiculous. But it made me feel better.”
Corcoran says she pays more attention to healthy habits, though she’s always been someone who’s active and exercises.
“So, I don’t worry about that, but I have taken up a lot more Scrabble and actually gotten pretty good at it,” she says.
None of her siblings have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
Although Corcoran is acutely conscious of those with cognitive impairments, she realizes others aren’t. Sometimes that leads to unexpected encounters, she says.
“I notice it … last week, I was on an escalator in Bloomingdale’s. I saw a woman who looked about 50. She was with, obviously, her mother, who was very hunched over. She looked about 75 — an old 75 — and I heard one line. She said, ‘Mom, I told you. I told you, it’s the eighth floor.’ And with such harshness in her tone, that it broke my heart. I took it upon myself to follow her up on the escalator and say, ‘You’ve got to learn to get into your mother’s space…. She doesn’t know any better.’ I gave her a big, long lecture. It was none of my business.”
Sharon Jayson is a contributing writer who covers aging, family, health care and retirement. She previously worked for USA Today and the Austin American-Statesman, and she also has written for Kaiser Health News, Time magazine and The Washington Post.
