Deadly brain disease doesnt feel rare to this Michigan womans family [Video]

MILFORD, MI – A Michigan woman whose family has been devastated by a rare genetic brain disease over generations is opening up on dealing with grief and end-of-life care.

Jen Nimsick sat down with MLive at her Milford home with a family portrait of her mother, Nancy Thompson, and Thompson’s siblings, Greg Noelken, Carol Lloyd and Sherri Nobbe. All four siblings learned that they carried the gene that causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease – known as familial CJD – after their mother, Rose Noelken, died from it in 2002.

READ MORE: Rare deadly brain disease ravages Michigan woman’s family

Since then, Thompson and Greg Noelken have died from the degenerative brain disease, Lloyd died from glioblastoma – an unrelated neurological disease – and Nobbe remains asymptomatic.

Nimsick and her sisters tested negative for the gene, but her brother Greg tested positive. She says that through the grieving process and their acceptance of the disease, her family has taken a pragmatic approach that …