The Scourge of the Age

I went with that delightful chap Louis Theroux to Phoenix Arizona last night, where the second of his programmes on Extreme Love was filmed (the first was families with autistic children).  This week the subject was dementia.

The Beatitudes Centre is a ‘retirement community’ for men and women with dementia.  It has endless corridors but the residents can’t get out; there is even a special code to use the lift.  The staff seem warm and caring and are excellent at deflecting the patients when they get restless or stressed

For instance, a patient who is a retired dentist is always happy to look at someone’s teeth and gave Louis an encouraging report on his.  When the dentist’s wife came to visit she had become accustomed to his flirtations with the other women – including the woman in charge.  Later in the programme she said she was getting ready to move away and get on with the rest of her life.  Oddly the next time she visited he was extremely attentive to her – as if he had a glimmer of what was going to happen.

One tiny lady was walking up and down the corridor – simply babbling nonsense whilst her son tried in vain to get some response from her.  And then suddenly she stopped in her tracks, reached up to him cupped his face in her hands and gave him such a loving look.  As he said to Louis her life was just fragments but a fragment like that made the visiting worth while.  His sisters no longer visited as it was too upsetting for them.

Louis also visited dementia sufferers being cared for at home by their family.  Nancy – in her late eighties and still a vibrant personality, was cared for by her husband John 89.  Nancy had been a New York model and although she could no longer complete a sentence, there would be bursts of animation and one caught a glimpse of the person she had been and understood why John was happy to care for her.

Quite bravely Louis agreed to look after Nancy for a whole morning whilst John popped out for some respite.  They went for a very short walk – Nancy got tired;  they had cookies with a drink, they listened to some music and eventually, exhausted – they fell asleep on the sofa.  There was great relief all round when John returned and in a quiet moment Nancy – in her fashion asked him not to go out and said that he was so good to her.

Another sufferer was a woman of 49 who can’t remember how to use a mobile.  She was a charming, laughing woman who just seemed to be drowning in a relentless sea of disorientation.  Tragically they had a young daughter and the sight of her patiently laying the table for a meal was so sad.  The husband was doing his best to be a carer but when things got too much his daughter said;

‘Remember Dad – softly and sweetly.

When they visited the doctor for a check up he asked the patient to draw a clock with the numbers on.  Afterwards Louis asked why the doctor had seemed to curtail the session and the doctor said he had seen all he needed and he didn’t want her to get more stressed.  The husband Glen said he thought about his and his daughter’s future.  He couldn’t afford residential care and was considering – later on – divorcing his wife so that she would be the responsibility of the state.  Seeing what decent people the family were I wondered how they could survive something like that.

There is something quite child-like about Louis Theroux and the people he meets trust him and like him.  His face reveals his compassion and he naturally reaches out to these patients and hugs them as if they were family.

 Dementia Awareness week is coming up soon.  Around 670.000 are thought to be affected by the condition and one in three expected to develop it in the future.