In the Memory Care Facility

Back in September, I posted about visiting two friends living in elder care facilities, Bill and Mike.  Since then, Bill has died.  I'd known him for 30 years, and he was pushing 100 years of age.  (So he was my father's age.)  Bill did not have Alzheimer's disease, but he did have days when he hallucinated about where he was and what part of his life he was living.  Other days, he was quite lucid, and he offered very coherent prayers to his God.

Mike, on the other hand, appears to me to be in the middle stage of Alzheimer's dementia.  In this stage you are usually still ambulatory, but you need a lot of help to get through your day.  (In the final stage, you are bedridden.)  He lives in a memory care facility which is quite near our home.  I've been visiting Mike almost every day for four months.  Most days he's pleasant to talk to, but he mostly talks gibberish.  He seems to recognize me and is happy to see me.  He usually knows his own first name but often can't recall his last name.

In visiting Mike, I've also come to know some of the others living there.  They come up and talk to me.  Some at first seem coherent, but I soon realize that they don't know where they are.  One man who used to work on the railroad wanted me to help him solve some issue that was keeping the trains from moving.  Yesterday, a man who was once a construction manager for a large company building power plants and oil refineries asked me for help with tools for a job.  I'm repeatedly approached by people, including Bill and Mike, saying that they are broke, and they don't know how they will pay their rent.  Among other things, they want to know how they can get a job.  Few of these people ever have visitors.

One thing that has surprised me is how quickly most of these people are declining.  In just four months I've seen remarkable deterioration in the cognition of several of these people -- but not Mike.  At least to me, Mike seems to be about where he was when he first entered the facility back in September.  While Alzheimer's disease progresses differently in different people, it still strikes me as odd that Mike seems to declining so much more slowly than some others there.

So, I wonder.  Mike is the only one for whom there's someone who sits with him daily and talks with him.  It may be nonsense talk, but there is still human interaction.

In Beating the Dementia Monster, we discussed the role of human interaction in staving off cognitive impairment.  I wrote that a neurologist once told me that, in his experience of 22 years, social connection was more important than exercise.  At Harborview, they told me not to quit my job, the idea being that working along side other people and interacting with them resists the advance of the disease.  I did cease my employment, but I now volunteer at the food bank, and getting to the 2nd edition of Beating the Dementia Monster seem to serve the same purpose.