Dementia tour reveals harsh reality

By Jessica Coleman

Staff Writer

   It’s well known that I have a great respect for our elderly. Seniors are some of my favorite people. My Senior Stories series was born as I passed by a nursing home, and watched a person being wheeled out on a stretcher, sheet over his or her face. We all know what that means. 

   I wondered what stories left this world with that person. How many memories float around in nursing homes? What adventures could they recall?  Did he rescue a buddy on the battlefield? Did she raise seven babies by herself? Maybe he worked for 30 years at an oil company and loved every minute of it (that’s a shout out to Mr. Melvin Martin – a fascinating man I was privileged to interview). 

   I’ve listened to men reminisce about their wives. I’ve laughed with them at long-passed jokes told to them by long-passed people, and I’ve been grateful that they trusted me enough to share their deepest emotions with me. 

   Last Wednesday, I had an opportunity to see the world throught the eyes of a dementia patient, and I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the profundity of the experience. 

   The Department of Aging and Disability Services took me on a Virtual Dementia Tour® at Southbrooke Manor. It lasted about six minutes, although it seemed like hours. 

   It’s designed to simulate dementia and other ailments that often plague nursing home residents. I had inserts in my shoes that simulated peripheral neuropathy (I was wearing heels –  terrible idea), gloves to simulate swelling and arthritis, and  special glasses that inhibited my vision and simulated macular degeneration. Over my ears were headphones that gave me a taste of hearing loss, and played “background noise,” allowing me to experience the distractions dementia patients struggle with. I learned that while I can have a conversation in a crowded room, focusing on only that conversation, a dementia sufferer cannot “tune out” a door closing, the conversaton at the next table, or any of the other hundreds of sounds the world is blaring at them. 

   They led me into a dark room and gave me simple instructions to complete five everyday tasks, such as “find the flowered handkerchief and put it with the towels,” and “find the ace of hearts in the deck of cards.” Simple stuff, right? Wrong.

   I couldn’t see or hear. I felt lost, confused, and helpless. I wandered around, found some light by the window and did my best, clinging to my little ace of hearts because it was the only thing I could remember I needed to have, and the only thing I’d heard clearly. For those six minutes, that ace of hearts was my prized possession, more valuable than diamonds, or the GMC dually I call the second love of my life. That ace of hearts was my connection to reality and I grasped it as if my life and sanity depended on it.

   Mind you, this was six minutes of my life. When the lights came on, the glasses and headphones came off of my head, and those tiny little slices of Hades came out of my shoes (seriously – do not wear heels to these events. Owie), I realized that I only had to live that way for a few minutes, and then I got to come back to the “real” world. Dementia patients live that way, every day, all day.

   I went home and had a good, cathartic cry. I have so much to be grateful for. I have a bunch of “first world problems,” and often it takes me a little bit to recognize them as such. “I had to look for my kid’s backpack for ten minutes because I couldn’t remember which car I drove Friday” is not a real problem, and sometimes I am kind of a spoiled brat when I become frustrated with such things. 

   There are people who live every day with constant pain, eyes that do not allow them to see, and have only the ace of hearts to make them feel somewhat normal, whatever their “ace of hearts” may be. It was quite a reality check, and as often happens, I have had another opportunity to be knocked down a notch, and to realize that maybe my problems just aren’t that bad.