Today, we were privileged to have visiting speakers (the founders of Alzheimer’s and Dementia Foundation) from the Alzheimer’s Foundation. We started with a brief introduction of the foundation and introduced ourselves, explaining our reasons/motif for joining this activity. This helped us to realize and remember once again why we are involved: some were affected by the disease as their family members/relatives/friends suffered from Alzheimer’s; some have heard about the disease and wanted to find out more about the disease itself as well as the ways of helping the victims. As stated in my goal, I myself was the one who had a family member go through a kind of dementia and personally I am very interested in studying about diseases, its cures, limitations and ways of helping out.
We were given clearer insight into dementia and Alzheimer’s. Dementia refers to a collective term of 100 different disorders of brain, such as vascular (strokes), Parkinson ’s disease and Alzheimer’s Alzheimer’s is a mysterious and complex disease that affects the brain function and needs to be studied about much more. It can be divided into 3 main stages as this is a progressive disease: (Division-Early-Later)
It usually takes 10~15 years for the disease to fully dominate a person and that person to become totally dependent. Moreover, 50% of people who have MCI (Mild Cognitive Infinitive) develop dementia, starting with recent memory loss.
What was shocking was the statistics provided: 5 million people in US have dementia, and out of these, 0.5 million are under the age of 65.
We were then invited into some visualization activities, where we tried to experience what it would be like to experience symptoms of dementia. First, we closed our eyes, pretended that we fell into deep sleep and woke up, not remembering who you are, where you are, who your family is etc. Thus, the speakers helped us to realize that if you can’t think, you cannot make further connections or relate to your own life. In fact, there are 40000~60,000 thoughts in your head each day (surprising!!) but this disease can literally make your brain empty and make you unable to think, speak or recall memories. Although a patient might be still fully conscious, his/her brain function ceases.
This disease also causes social and ethnic issues beyond our imagination. It causes economic, social, emotional and physical challenges to the family whose member might suffer from Alzheimer’s. Moreover, it was clearly emphasized that the patients who have Alzheimer’s are still human beings who should not be left aside or laughed at but rather be part of the society and family and be considered useful with love, care and support. In fact, there still exist a lot of misunderstandings about the disease that makes families of patients feel reluctant.
Thus, in order to aid the patients and their families and friends, we would be working closely with the Foundation in whatever way we could. For example, we are considering a visit to the new day care centre for the patients that is expected to be open from the New year, which was possible from the funding from many, including our very own. Moreover, there would be a Christmas concert on the December 3rd, where families and patients are invited. Secondly, there would be a concert held on the 24th September 2011, which is nearly a year away so we hope to get some good preparations done for it. Lastly, there would be a visitor from Canada on the 10th November who is going to hold some presentations on this disease.
As the guest speaker pointed out, it is the “community-based service for community” and the invited guests and their presentations clearly helped us to realize the value and importance of this voluntary work.
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