An autoimmune disease stole this man's memory. Here's how he's learning to cope

“My year of unraveling” is how a despairing Christy Morrill described nightmarish months when his immune system hijacked his brain.

What’s called autoimmune encephalitis attacks the organ that makes us “us,” and it can appear out of the blue.

Morrill went for a bike ride with friends along the California coast, stopping for lunch, and they noticed nothing wrong. Neither did Morrill until his wife asked how it went — and he'd forgotten. Morrill would get worse before he got better. “Unhinged” and “fighting to see light,” he wrote as delusions set in and holes in his memory grew.

Of all the ways our immune system can run amok and damage the body instead of protecting it, autoimmune encephalitis is one of the most unfathomable. Seemingly healthy people abruptly spiral with confusion, memory loss, seizures, even psychosis.

But doctors are getting better at identifying it, thanks to discoveries of a growing list of the rogue antibodies responsible that, if found in blood and spinal fluid, aid diagnosis. Every year new culprit antibodies are being uncovered, said Dr. Sam Horng, a neurologist at Mount Sinai Health System in New York who has cared for patients with multiple forms of this mysterious disease.

And while treatment today involves general ways to fight the inflammation, two major clinical trials are underway aiming for more targeted therapy.

Still, it's tricky. Symptoms can be mistaken for psychiatric or other neurologic disorders, delaying proper treatment.

“When someone’s having new changes in their mental status, they’re worsening and if there’s sort of like a bizarre quality to it, that’s something that kind of tips our suspicion,” Horng said. “It’s important not to miss a treatable condition.”

With early diagnosis and care, some patients fully recover. Others like Morrill recover normal daily functioning but grapple with some lasting damage — in his case, lost decades of “autobiographical” memories. This 72-year-old literature major can still spout facts and figures learned long ago, and he makes new memories every day. But even family photos can’t help him recall pivotal moments in his own life.

“I remember ‘Ulysses’ is published in Paris in 1922 at Sylvia Beach’s bookstore. Why do I remember that, which is of no use to me anymore, and yet I can’t remember my son’s wedding?” Morrill wonders.

Encephalitis means the brain is inflamed and symptoms can vary from mild to life-threatening. Infections are a common cause, typically requiring treatment of the underlying virus or bacteria. But when that's ruled out, an autoimmune cause has to be considered, Horng said, especially when symptoms arise suddenly.

The umbrella term autoimmune encephalitis covers a group of diseases with weird-sounding names based on the antibody fueling it, such as anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis.

While they're not new diseases, that one got a name in 2007 when Dr. Josep Dalmau, then at the University of Pennsylvania, discovered the first culprit antibody, sparking a hunt for more.

That anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis tends to strike younger women and, one of the bizarre factors, it’s sometimes triggered by an ovarian “dermoid” cyst.

How? That type of cyst has similarities to some brain tissue, Horng explained. The immune system can develop antibodies recognizing certain proteins from the growth. If those antibodies get into the brain, they can mistakenly target NMDA receptors on healthy brain cells, sparking personality and behavior changes that can include hallucinations.

Different antibodies create different problems depending if they mostly hit memory and mood areas in the brain, or sensory and movement regions.

Altogether, “facets of personhood seem to be impaired," Horng said.

Therapies include filtering harmful antibodies out of patients' blood, infusing healthy ones, and high-dose steroids to calm inflammation.

Those cyst-related antibodies stealthily attacked Kiara Alexander in Charlotte, North Carolina, who’d never heard of the brain illness. She’d brushed off some oddities — a little forgetfulness, zoning out a few minutes — until she found herself in an ambulance because of a seizure.

Maybe dehydration, the first hospital concluded. At a second hospital after a second seizure, a doctor recognized the possible signs, ordering a spinal tap that found the culprit antibodies.

As Alexander's treatment began, other symptoms ramped up. She has little clear memory of the monthlong hospital stay: “They said I would just wake up screaming. What I could remember, it was like a nightmare, like the devil trying to catch me.”

Later Alexander would ask about her 9-year-old daughter and when she could go home — only to forget the answer and ask again.

Alexander feels lucky she was diagnosed quickly, and she got the ovarian cyst removed. But it took over a year to fully recover and return to work full time.

In San Carlos, California, in early 2020, it was taking months to determine what caused Morrill's sudden memory problem. He remembered facts and spoke eloquently but was losing recall of personal events, a weird combination that prompted Dr. Michael Cohen, a neurologist at Sutter Health, to send him for more specialized testing.

“It’s very unusual, I mean extremely unusual, to just complain of a problem with autobiographical memory,” Cohen said. “One has to think about unusual disorders.”

Meanwhile Morrill’s wife, Karen, thought she’d detected subtle seizures — and one finally happened in front of another doctor, helping spur a spinal tap and diagnosis of LGI1-antibody encephalitis.

It’s a type most common in men over age 50. Those rogue antibodies disrupt how neurons signal each other, and MRI scans showed they’d targeted a key memory center.

By then Morrill, who’d spent retirement guiding kayak tours, could no longer safely get on the water. He’d quit reading and as his treatments changed, he’d get agitated with scary delusions.

“I lost total mental capacity and fell apart,” Morrill describes it.

He used haiku to make sense of the incomprehensible, and months into treatment finally wondered if the “meds coursing through me” really were “dousing the fire. Rays of hope?”

The nonprofit Autoimmune Encephalitis Alliance lists about two dozen antibodies — and counting — known to play a role in these brain illnesses so far.

Clinical trials, offered at major medical centers around the country, are testing two drugs now used for other autoimmune diseases to see if tamping down antibody production can ease encephalitis.

More awareness of these rare diseases is critical, said North Carolina's Alexander, who sought out fellow patients. “That's a terrible feeling, feeling like you're alone.”

As for Morrill, five years later he still grieves decades of lost memories: family gatherings, a year spent studying in Scotland, the travel with his wife.

But he’s making new memories with grandkids, is back outdoors — and leads an AE Alliance support group, using his haiku to illustrate the journey from his “unraveling” to “the present is what I have, daybreaks and sunsets” to, finally, “I can sustain hope.”

“I’m reentering some real time of fun, joy,” Morrill said. “I wasn’t shooting for that. I just wanted to be alive.”

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Kiara Alexander, left, who was hospitalized with autoimmune encephalitis, leaves a grocery store with her daughter Kennedi, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Kiara Alexander, who was hospitalized with autoimmune encephalitis, poses for a photo at her home, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Christy Morrill, 72, who lost decades of memories to autoimmune encephalitis, looks over a photo album of his son's wedding, at his home, Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025, in San Carlos, Calif. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Christy Morrill, 72, left, who lost decades of memories to autoimmune encephalitis, looks over family photo albums with, from left, his wife Karen, daughter Caitlin and grandson Colter, at his home, Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025, in San Carlos, Calif. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Christy Morrill, 72, who lost decades of memories to autoimmune encephalitis, poses for a photo at his home, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, in San Carlos, Calif. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Christy Morrill, 72, who lost decades of memories to autoimmune encephalitis, holds up a viewfinder with a slide film of himself as a college student, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025, at his home in San Carlos, Calif. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

GREELEY, Colo. (AP) — Thousands of workers for the world’s largest meatpacking company began a two-week strike Monday in Colorado, threatening to make already costly beef even more expensive for U.S. consumers.

As the sun rose, employees picketed outside the Swift Beef Co. plant in Greeley, one of the largest slaughterhouses in the nation that's owned by JBS USA. Walking back and forth in the morning cold, bundled in blankets, some yelled “huelga!” — Spanish for “strike." Others waved signs encouraging people to not buy from JBS.

The first walkout at a U.S. beef slaughterhouse in four decades follows accusations from union officials that the company retaliated against workers and committed other unfair labor practices. They said the company offered wage increases of less than 2% annually, which is below Colorado's inflation rate.

Union officials said 99% of the plant’s 3,800 unionized workers voted to strike. More than 2,600 showed up at the picket line by early Monday afternoon and others were expected to check in over coming days, said Claire Poundstone, an attorney for the United Food and Commercial Union Local 7.

Poundstone said the strike could be repeated if the unfair labor practices recur.

A spokesperson at JBS USA denied any labor law violations and said its offer is fair. Each side blamed the other for an impasse before the contract ended Sunday night.

“They don’t really value their workers and we’re the ones that help them get all their profit,” said Leticia Avalos, a union steward and Greeley native who has been working at the plant since 2020. She depends on the job to support her family, including a 6-month-old baby, but said she'll make sacrifices to get the company to listen.

The union said its workers perform some of the most difficult and dangerous jobs in the country and deserve higher wages and better health care. It said JBS in many cases has charged workers $1,100 or more to offset the company’s expenses for personal protective equipment.

Smoke rose from parts of the plant Monday, but it was unclear if it was fully operating. JBS spokesperson Nikki Richardson said “many team members” reported to work but did not provide a precise number.

“Our team members want stability, they want to support their families, and they deserved the opportunity to vote on the company’s historic offer — an opportunity the union leadership has denied them,” Richardson wrote in an email.

Richardson said any employee who didn’t strike would have work and be paid. The company also has said it would move production as needed to other JBS facilities.

The strike comes at a 75-year low in U.S. cattle numbers, with a Jan. 1 inventory of 86.2 million animals — down 1% from the prior year. The decline has been driven in part by drought and low prices offered to ranchers. Meanwhile, beef prices have soared to record levels.

President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Brazil, a major beef exporter, have also curbed imports. Pressed to act on “affordability” issues after Republican losses last November, Trump accused foreign-owned companies of driving up U.S. beef prices and asked the Department of Justice to investigate.

The price for 100% ground chuck beef more than doubled over the past two decades from $2.55 to $6.07 per pound, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The increase has added to economic anxiety in the U.S. The Trump administration has promoted a trade deal with Argentina in efforts to lower prices for food, including beef.

The Greeley plant has about 6% of the total U.S. beef slaughterhouse capacity, said Abby Greiman, a livestock market adviser for industry consultant Ever.Ag.

Most ranchers can still get cattle to market because the national herd is smaller, and that could give JBS some leverage in negotiations, since other slaughterhouses can absorb the Greeley plant's work, Greiman said.

Yet an extended dispute with the Greeley workers could disrupt the industry, particularly in Colorado and neighboring states, said Jennifer Martin at Colorado State University’s animal sciences department.

“The feedlots, the people who have the cattle right now -- the longer they sit kind of in a holding pattern, the more expensive they become to feed,” said Martin. “For consumers, it means that prices will likely go up."

The strike follows the January closure of a meatpacking plant in Lexington, Nebraska, which was expected to ripple through the local economy and community. Tyson Foods cited the smaller herd and millions of dollars in expected losses this year for the closure.

JBS has a market capitalization of $17 billion on the New York Stock Exchange after being approved for trading last May, despite environmental opposition and a federal probe that led to its guilty plea in October to bribing Brazilian officials for the financing it used for its U.S. expansion.

At the Greeley plant, the company tried to intimidate workers to quit the union in one-on-one meetings, union general counsel Matt Shechter said.

It’s the first strike at a U.S. slaughterhouse since workers walked out at a Hormel plant in Minnesota in 1985, according to Martin and Kim Cordova, president of the union in Greeley. That strike lasted more than a year and included violent confrontations between police and protesters, according to the Minnesota Historical Society.

JBS is the top employer in Greeley, a city 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of Denver with a population of about 114,000 people.

“It’s a huge impact in the community for us to be striking,” said union steward Avalos. “I know a lot of us are worried, and hope that nothing goes even more south.”

Brown reported from Billings, Montana, and Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Associated Press journalists Colleen Slevin in Denver and Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed.

Meatpacking workers strike at Colorado's JBS-owned Swift Beef company Monday, March, 16, 2026, in Greeley, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)

Anthony Martinez tells fellow meatpacking workers on strike that they can take a break whenever they need to Monday, March 16, 2026, in Greeley, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)

Meatpacking workers strike at Colorado's JBS-owned Swift Beef company Monday, March 16, 2026, in Greeley, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)

Meatpacking workers strike at Colorado's JBS-owned Swift Beef company Monday, March 16, 2026, in Greeley, Colo. (AP Photo/Brittany Peterson)

FILE - Employees walk in front of the entrance to the JBS meat processing plant, July 23, 2021, in Greeley, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)