Workshops Will Offer Caregivers Tips On Alzheimer’s

They call it the caregiver’s disease, and last weekend Nancy Reagan began showing symptoms.

“You pay for everything, don’t you?” she said of the joys of her life before husband Ronald Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Throughout the country, the Reagans’ private pain is proving a bittersweet bonanza for Alzheimer’s disease. Funding, research and public awareness are all expected to rise as the former president’s health declines.

“I know it will make a difference - just like when Rock Hudson got AIDS,” said Carol Aubertin, a geriatric specialist with Group Health Northwest. “It’s just too bad it takes that.”

For Aubertin and other professionals, the former first lady’s grief and fear are mirrored by hundreds in Spokane.

At a series of five workshops beginning Wednesday, Ray Raschko will address what it might feel like for Mr. Reagan.

Imagine parking at the Parkade downtown, he says, and returning an hour later, unable to find your car. First you’re anxious, then angry.

“Someone stole my car!” Of course, they didn’t. It was on the next level. You find it and drive away.

But try to imagine that happening hour after hour, with keys, names, even notes you wrote to yourself, he says. Imagine the anxiety, the lashing out.

“Only with this disease, it doesn’t go away. It gets worse,” says Raschko, director of Elder Services in Spokane.

Raschko’s analysis on Wednesday will open the annual education series sponsored by the Eastern Washington Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.

The Elder Services chief is a leading local authority on a disease that touches nearly 4 million Americans and kills an estimated 100,000 annually. About 1,400 people receive the Alzheimer’s Association newsletter in the Spokane-based chapter alone.

The weekly series also includes:

A March 22 program on legal issues to help families plan and protect themselves, by Larry Weiser, professor of law at Gonzaga Law School.

A March 29 discussion by Dr. Robert Bray, a Spokane family physician, on diagnosis and research on Alzheimer’s.

An April 5 discussion of behavior management and medication by Aubertin, a consulting nurse, and Jutta Joseph, assistant professor of pharmacy practice at Washington State University.

An April 12 panel on local options, including respite care, Elder Services, adult family homes and others. Caregivers will share survival tips.

The five programs draw on the expertise of such professionals as Aubertin, who has cared for Alzheimer’s patients for more than two decades. Her advice on managing difficult behavior is often startlingly practical and creative: covering doorknobs, for instance, or installing door locks above eye level to keep people from wandering.

One client insisted he had to go to work on construction of Grand Coulee Dam, as he’d done in his youth. Aubertin helped fashion a heavy locked toolbox that nursing home staff would remind the man not to forget on his “way to work.”

He’d lug the toolbox down the hall, tire, and while he calmly rested, would forget where he was trying to go.

To calm Alzheimer’s-stricken women looking for their babies, she has used dolls filled with sand, or baskets of baby clothes, to be folded and refolded.

Such advice results from a long professional link with Alzheimer’s. But it is also personal. Aubertin’s 76-year-old mother has developed the disease.

“It just drains you,” Aubertin said. “And it’s killing my father.”

“It’s a devastating disease, and you don’t realize that until you’re in the middle of it,” said Becky Tiller, assistant director of Holy Family Adult Day Health.

Spokane offers myriad services, including Holy Family’s three health centers, which offer daytime care and respite for families. Support groups stretch from the Spokane Valley to Stevens County, from Whitman County to the Whitworth area.

Elder Services, under Spokane Mental Health, works to keep seniors in their homes and even helps people manage their money if that’s what it takes to maintain independence.

Elder Services’ acclaimed Gatekeeper program, which trains meter readers, postal carriers and other non-professionals to recognize warning signs in seniors, helps ailing residents who don’t have families.

With the baby boomers aging, Raschko and Tiller expect the number of Alzheimer’s sufferers without caregivers to grow dramatically, especially since a larger proportion of boomers have divorced or never married.

Indeed, the sheer number of boomers will likely send Alzheimer’s figures much higher (an estimated 40 percent of all people in their 80s will develop Alzheimer’s).

They hope education and awareness can help communities prepare by strengthening and protecting their existing programs.

Still, Tiller said the biggest obstacle to getting help is often the long phase of denial most sufferers and families go through. That’s where she hopes the Reagans will help.

“If people like Nancy Reagan are coming out and asking for help, that will hopefully encourage others to come out, too, and say, ‘I can’t do this. I can’t handle this by myself.”’