Alzheimer's Technology Improving Lives for Patients & Family Pt. 2

Activities directors, caregivers, and healthcare professionals,here is some great information

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professionals,

Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care  professionals to get an easyceu or two

Follow alzheimersideas on twitter
The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition]

Blake Lipton

ORONO - Husson Women's Head Basketball Coach, Kissy Walker, already has a tough schedule.

Between countless practices and games, she now has a mother living with Alzheimer's.

"I leave here often thinking, I want to cry," says Walker. "It's been one of the hardest things to deal with because she's always been so vibrant and energetic."

She and her mother, Ellie, now a resident at Dirigo Pines in Orono, used to be able to talk on the phone just two years ago. 

Her mother was also able to attend Kissy's basketball games.

Since then, Ellie's Alzheimer's has set in, but the disease is not stopping Kissy from making the trip to the retirement home at least four to five times a week to share moments of laughter and joy with her mother.

"She can be bellowing out songs, laughing to videos," says Kissy. "It's just a little bit of comfort for the family."

Using the new, "It's Never 2 Late Technology" available at the home, she is thankful for the little bit of her mother's old-self she and her can both experience together.

"Knowing that she's got some happiness back in her," she says. "She's not just existing and there's some life left in her."

In addition to providing a way to trigger emotional responses in a patient, it also allows families an easier way to connect through emails and messages that go right to the device.

"It makes the family more engaged because it's fun and makes them feel like they can be a part of the person's life," says Dr. Clifford Singer, MD at Acadia Hospital in Bangor.

Dr. Singer says until a cure for Alzheimer's is found, technology like this can go a long way in buying time for families like Ellie's, giving them peace of mind during an Alzheimer's patient's final years.

"They're people we love, they're people we care about, their well being, their quality of life, should matter to us," he says.

Now, Kissy hopes more families will get to use programs like this when they're faced with a loved one living with Alzheimer's.

"This is a bonus having technology like this and you have to look at it as at least we have that," she says

Alzheimer's Technology Improving Lives for Patients & Family Pt. 1

Activities directors, caregivers, and healthcare professionals,here is some great information

Here is a great dementia resource for caregivers and healthcare professionals,

Your residents will love the Amazon Kindle Fire

Here is information on being the best caregiver you can be

Here is a way for nurses administrators, social workers and other health care  professionals to get an easyceu or two

Follow alzheimersideas on twitter
The Dementia Caregiver's Little Book of Hope [Kindle Edition]

Blake Lipton

ORONO - Residents living with Alzheimer's at a local retirement home are getting a chance to improve their quality of life using a new technology.

The new technology comes from an idea from Dirigo Pine's parent company in Topsham, Maine.

Now, it has made its way to Orono, showing residents with Alzheimer's and their loved ones it is never too late to remember. 

Dirigo Pines resident, Ellie, can be hard to understand sometimes. 

She lives with Alzheimer's at the retirement home at 83 years old and has lost her ability to speak clearly.

But recently, a new piece of technology in memory care is helping Ellie have moments of her old self. 

"To see people make the connection and be excited about something from their past and wanting to share it with others is a nice thing to see," says Tracy Comer, Lead Activities Assistant at Dirigo Pines.

Comer oversees the interactive "It's Never 2 Late" program at the retirement community.

"I kind of underestimated what it was," she says about her first impressions of the new technology.

The program allows instructors or loved ones to use a touch screen device to select a user's personalized profile.

From there you can pull up music, pictures, maps and more that can help trigger emotional experiences in certain residents with Alzheimer's like Ellie.

Now, Ellie can recall words to old songs she used to sing, despite her problems with speaking clearly.

"If you access old memory, especially music," says Dr. Clifford Singer, MD, Chief of Geriatric Neuropsychiatry at Acadia Hospital. "The music that people like when they were in high school or when they were young, you can really engage deep emotional responses in people who seem to have long ago given up."

Dr. Singer says while technology like this is not proven to permanently fix the problem of Alzheimer's, it can go a long way in improving the quality of life of residents and their families dealing with this difficult disease.

"Emotional experiences can have an emotional effect of even hours, or days in making them happier or calmer," says Dr. Singer.

"It kind of gives you a comfort level knowing that there's some life left in her," says Husson Women's Head Basketball Coach, Kissy Walker, who is the daughter of Ellie. "You know that she's having some some happiness."

In part two of this special report, we hear more from Kissy about how this new technology impacts her family as they deal with a loved one living with Alzheimer's