USC student raises funds to fight Alzheimer’s in mother’s honor [Video]

COLUMBIA, S.C. — A University of South Carolina student is determined to fight against Alzheimer’s through an upcoming walk. Summer Schwedes’s mom was diagnosed with young-onset Alzheimer’s at 47 when Summer was only 13. 

“I knew she had Alzheimer’s. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t even accept that it was terminal or fatal,” USC freshman Summer Schwedes said. 

Summer said that, at an early age, she denied her mother’s condition. She didn’t even want to look it up. 

“It took a while for me to get over that hump, to say that, yeah, she’s not going to be at my high school graduation. I’m not going to get to be with her and have a dance at my wedding,” she said. “And that was, like, a big kind of realization to take, so I avoided it …