I knew that participating in a clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s drug was unlikely to help me. But it gave me hope.

So when the news broke this week that the drug company Biogen had canceled its once-promising trial because of “disappointing results,” I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach.

It had been a difficult week already. The night before Biogen canceled the trial, I realized that I was losing 12 years of memories of my cherished dog Abe, who died from kidney disease last year. There are images of him in my brain, but they are from photographs. I lay in bed, digging frantically in my memory for him, and came up empty.

This disease is bad. I feel as if I’m getting erased and medical science doesn’t have any answers.

My phone began to ring, followed by Facebook messages: “Did you see the news today?”