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"Jennifer Yee was eight hours from the top of Ecuador&amp;amp;#8217;s Cotopaxi, one of the world&amp;amp;#8217;s highest volcanoes, when she felt very afraid. &amp;amp;#8220;I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t think I could make it,&amp;amp;#8221; says the Los Angeles-based filmmaker. Short of breath and weighed down with equipment, Yee knew she had to go on: &amp;amp;#8220;Giving up meant letting down my team and the 103 million people we were climbing for, those with Alzheimer&amp;amp;#8217;s and Parkinson&amp;amp;#8217;s and their loved ones.&amp;amp;#8221; Yee not only reached the 19,347- foot summit, but she filmed the climb for her new documentary, 10 Mountains 10 Years, designed to raise awareness of these diseases. It juxtaposes her team&amp;amp;#8217;s efforts with the medical mountains Alzheimer&amp;amp;#8217;s and Parkinson&amp;amp;#8217;s patients and their caregivers face fighting these neurological illnesses. An avid rock climber herself, Yee was inspired to make the film after hearing about Enzo Simone, a mountaineer on an astonishing mission: to climb 10 of the world&amp;amp;#8217;s highest peaks in a decade to help fund research for Alzheimer&amp;amp;#8217;s and Parkinson&amp;amp;#8217;s, which have afflicted several of his relatives. She was moved by his courage&amp;amp;#8212;and wanted to document the journey of his team, the Regulars. But climbs can be punishing, and Yee trained for eight months to get into shape. First she conquered Cotopaxi, then Oregon&amp;amp;#8217;s Mt. Hood, followed by Tanzania&amp;amp;#8217;s Mt. Kilimanjaro. By that time, The Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation, which supports caregivers of chronic and degenerative illnesses, had gotten involved with the film. (Gibbons lost her mother and grandmother to Alzheimer&amp;amp;#8217;s.) The foundation gave the Regulars hundreds of letters from caregivers and survivors for their Kilimanjaro climb. &amp;amp;#8220;At each camp, we read one aloud,&amp;amp;#8221; Yee recalls. &amp;amp;#8220;One woman wrote that her mother with Alzheimer&amp;amp;#8217;s struggled to get out of bed, yet she lit a candle for us every day.&amp;amp;#8221; That powered Yee through the steepest incline. &amp;amp;#8220;I&amp;amp;#8217;d think of those candles and take another step.&amp;amp;#8221; TV personality Gibbons was not the only celebrity to support Yee&amp;amp;#8217;s project: Anne Hathaway, who plays a woman with early-stage Parkinson&amp;amp;#8217;s in the new film Love and Other Drugs, narrated; Bruce Springsteen, who has a friend with the illness, gave his song &amp;amp;#8220;Leap of Faith&amp;amp;#8221; for the soundtrack. &amp;amp;#8220;This film,&amp;amp;#8221; Yee says, &amp;amp;#8220;is my leap of faith that there will be a cure.&amp;amp;#8221; For information about Jennifer Yee&amp;amp;#8217;s film, Ten Mountains, Ten Years, go to backlightproductions.com. Learn how you can help fight Alzheimer&amp;amp;#8217;s and Parkinson&amp;amp;#8217;s and support caregivers at focusonacure.org and leezasplace.org. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2010/10/how-far-would-you-go-to-fight-a-deadly-disease>