Alzheimer’s caregivers need all the support they can get, “and by no means is there enough help to go around,” said Dr. Erin Cooper, but events like the Fifth Annual Fremont Area Alzheimer’s Memory Walk help.
The Memory Walk will be held Saturday at Midland University. Registration starts at 9 a.m., with the walk beginning at 10 a.m. The public is invited.
In the event of inclement weather, it will be held inside Hopkins Arena, 700 E. 10th St.
The Memory Walk will include face painting, refreshments, drawings for prizes, music and cheering by the Midland pep band and cheerleaders. Rosenbach Warrior Training Branch will provide a martial arts demonstration.
The event also will include a field of pinwheels – representing the forget-me-not flower – the official flower for Alzheimer’s. Those who wish to donate in honor or in memory of someone may do so and have that person’s name put on one of the pinwheel flowers.
Aside from raising awareness about Alzheimer ’s disease, the Memory Walk is a major fundraiser for the Fremont Area Alzheimer’s Committee, generating about $30,000 a year.
The committee, through a fund set up with the Fremont Area Community Foundation, grants 40 percent of the Memory Walk proceeds toward caregiver education and programming in the Fremont area. The other 60 percent is given to institutions doing cutting-edge Alzheimer’s research.
Caregivers are often the adult children of Alzheimer’s patients, said Cooper, family physician at Fremont Family Care.
“I think we’re seeing more and more that it’s children of people with dementia who are either by choice or financial necessity ending up as primary caregivers for their loved ones,” she said. “Dementia most often affects people in their 70s and beyond, although it can occur younger, but that’s unusual, so most of these children are in their 40s or 50s.”
“With dementia,” she said, “there’s no cure for it, so it just gets progressively worse. The typical course of Alzheimer’s dementia can sometimes be as long as 12 years or more from the time of symptoms first starting until the person’s death, so it’s a very long period of time.”
As the disease progresses, robbing patients of their awareness, memory and judgment, more is required of the caregivers, Cooper explained.
“At some point a person stops driving,” she said, “they not only need help with medications and household chores like cooking and cleaning, but ultimately they often need assistance with bathing and simple things like getting dress. Sometimes people with dementia develop behavioral changes, so the person is needing to supervise them more. Ultimately, in advanced dementia, the person needs 24-hour care, 24-hour supervision, help with all of their daily activities.”
A dementia patient in a nursing home might have three to five people tending to their needs over a 24-hour period, Cooper pointed out, “but for a lot of these people who are in their homes with loved ones caring for them, it may only be one person. It’s really difficult and very stressful, but so many caregivers take great pride in it because they love the person and they want them to be well cared for and stay in their home as long as they can.”
“A lot of these adult care givers are still working full-time jobs themselves and taking care of their own families and then trying to manage taking care of an aging parent with dementia,” she said.
Sometimes something as simple as helping with household tasks or volunteering to sit with an Alzheimer’s patient so the caregiver can take care of day-to-day chores away from the home, like shopping or getting the car fixed, can make a big difference, Cooper said. Caregivers also often need help bathing their loved one.
“Some of the funding from the walks and the work that the Alzheimer’s Association does can at least begin to help meet those needs in the community,” Cooper said.
One of the recipients of research dollars from the Memory Walk last year was Alzheimer’s Disease Research, which was given $7,350.
A program of the BrightFocus Foundation, Alzheimer’s Disease Research helps support research into the causes, symptoms, treatment and possible cures for Alzheimer’s disease.
“Although large-scale human clinical trials make news when their results are released,” Guy Eakin, the foundation’s vice president for scientific affairs, wrote in a recent press statement, “at BrightFocus we know that it is bold, early-stage research that will give us the first clues on how to find a cure for Alzheimer’s. Gifts from The Fremont Area Alzheimer’s Committee help to fund breakthrough research.”
Eakin pointed to research into developing a class of drugs by targeting a single brain molecule, genetic research into treatments to restore normal brain function, and preventing brain cell death by increasing blood flow.
More than 5 million Americans and 18 million people worldwide are believed to have Alzheimer’s disease.
The Fremont Area Alzheimer’s Walk is presented by Nye Senior Services, Fremont Area Medical Center and Valmont and is supported by the community, including numerous local corporate and individual sponsors.
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