Last May
I attended a well-organized session in the Boston area about the national “Dementia
Friendly” movement. Lunch was devoted to networking, not just socializing.
Presentations were informative, and not overlong. A theme of the forum was an
analogy to the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act, which focused on making it
much easier for people with handicaps to get around. I ended up titling my
post “The curb cut for cognitive impairment,” a phrase I heard at the forum.
Last week, advocates for Alzheimer’s services, several of
them employed by the Boston-area Jewish Family & Children’s Services
organization, got some welcome news. Massachusetts will be receiving money for
Dementia Friendly funding purposes. As JF&CS’ Beth Soltzberg commented in an
email, Dementia Friendly is an international organization that aims to change
the way the public perceives people with dementia. Soltzberg also noted that the
organization will be training volunteers in various locales, including nonprofits
and churches and other houses of worship.
And why are such services necessary? Even in an early stage
of Alzheimer’s, routine tasks can become challenging. In 2013 and 2014, before
I was diagnosed but knew something was wrong, I was doing the vast majority of
my family’s grocery shopping. In one ignominious stretch, I lost my shopping
list at my very small, very crowded, Market Basket supermarket in successive
Saturdays. On the first visit, I finally recovered the precious list, amid
muddy footprints. The next week I had to phone Paula, who texted me as many of
the items on her list that she and I—mostly she—could recall.
But at least supermarkets are part of the old economy, not
the new economy, where it seems that everything is expected to be accomplished
in a blink of the eye. I have some nostalgia for the technology of the previous
century, when someone sat for hours on a stool while people dropped tokens into
slots that provided ingress to the subway system. I’m sure that those 1990s
token takers must have been numbingly bored, but there was no real complexity for
people with mild dementia to navigate the system.
This past Saturday I hesitated, and instead of adding
credit to my plastic “Charlie Card,” I listened to an automated message
informing me that I was out of time. I took it personally. Can’t you give me another 30 seconds. With some other person
approaching the touch screen, I became uneasy. How long would it be before my
fellow patron would become impatient with me? I chose the expedient route. I
bought $10 of credit from the machine, which, in reply, spit out a small paper
card. A single subway fare was $2.75. If I had used my Charlie Card, which
still had ample credit on it, I would have received full value for my money.
But by entering $10, a nice, simple sum, I was entitled to only three rides. I
should have done the math in my head:
$2.75 x 4 = $11.00. It was as if I was making an unintentional donation
to the subway system. I suspect that this was by design.
But let’s move on to a more pleasant topic. This week,
Alice Bonner, the Massachusetts secretary of Elder Affairs, appeared in a public
service video, focusing on dementia-friendly services. Bonner’s mother, who has
Alzheimer’s, has been a dancer since she was three years old. Now 87, she still
loves to tap-dance. “When she’s up on the stage,” Bonner commented, “she
communicates without words; and this can happen anywhere—when we’re in town and
she’s going to the grocery store or a bank,” Bonner said. Bonner’s mother does
get frustrated at times, Bonner noted, but when people provide her some
patience, she can make herself understood. “It can be really frustrating, but
if people can give her an opportunity,” by the end of the conversation, they
have a sense of what she is trying to say.
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