But at her Pasadena home on a recent afternoon, it is clear something is wrong. She can speak, though she often stumbles over words. At times she seems to be keeping up her end of a conversation, but a minute later, it is hard to follow what she is trying to say.
She repeatedly says, "I'm fine."
"I could do anything if they'd let me," she says, later adding, "I dress myself, I bathe myself, I can do all those things."
"You're very self-sufficient," Bugg assures her.
"And I'm going to stay that way," she said.
With Frohder now in a clinical trial - perhaps getting an experimental drug, perhaps just a placebo - the couple holds on to a small thread of hope. "This disease is taking over and limiting her abilities," Bugg said. "I just hope we can slow it down. I'd love to see a miracle happen."
This is not the life Kent Bugg imagined he would have at age 48. He figured he and Frohder, now 58, would still be working, saving up for a retirement to be spent out West or traveling the nation in a motor home. Now, he is the only one drawing a paycheck, as a customer service agent for AirTran Airways. Free moments are spent worrying about whether his wife will burn herself cooking or take her pills on time. Any dream of life on the open road has been deferred.
"She should be enjoying her retirement. She's been working since she was 16 years old. This should be a time in her life when she should at least be comfortable and safe," said Ann Frohder, 54, one of Dorothy's four sisters.
Instead, Bugg wonders how he will take care of his wife as her condition continues to worsen, worries about how she will be each night when he returns home from work. As he watches her sleep each morning, he fears this could be the day that this disease of constant indignities, of constant losses, will take so much that the Dorothy he knows won't be there when she wakes.
He does much of this alone (save for Ann, who recently moved to Maryland to help when she could).
The middle-aged don't usually travel this road. When Frohder goes to the local senior center on long lonely days while her husband is at work, the only people close to her age are some of the employees. When Bugg goes to a monthly meeting of the local Alzheimer's caregiver group, he is the youngest person there, usually by decades.
