'Laury' chronicles dementia battle.

Byline: Lynn Elber

LOS ANGELES -- Pamela Hogan knew Laury Sacks before, as a talented, big-hearted friend, wife and mother. Connie Shulman knew Sacks after, when she was in the grip of the early onset dementia that would swiftly claim her life.

Together, documentarian Hogan and actress Shulman, who plays Yoga Jones in "Orange Is the New Black,'' carefully recorded Sachs' treacherous journey to help ease her isolation as the disease progressed.

The result -- "Looks Like Laury, Sounds Like Laury'' -- debuts at 8 p.m. Tuesday on the World Channel, part of the third season of its "America ReFramed.'' The documentary will stream on worldchannel.org starting Wednesday and through April 9.

Although Sacks herself was an actor and writer, it was motherhood that brought the three Manhattan residents together. Their children were playmates and the women became friends: Hogan met Sacks in the late 1990s, and Shulman joined the circle in 2005 when Sacks was being transformed by illness.

At age 46, the once witty, exuberant woman was having difficulty expressing herself; neurological tests ultimately diagnosed frontotemporal dementia. It's the term for a group of disorders that tend to occur at a younger age than Alzheimer's, between 40 and 75, and which affect areas of the brain generally associated with personality, behavior and language, according to the Mayo Clinic.

When Sacks' husband, Eric, asked for help in keeping her engaged, Shulman suggested to her friend the idea of recording her struggle. Sacks didn't need words to respond.

"Laury pulled out her cellphone, dialed it and handed me...