Time Based Nurture

I have been trying to describe the exact model we are testing here at the Fremont Street Center for Healthy Aging. We eat well, get exercise, and try to live balanced lives - all well established avenues to health. But we are doing something else on top of that, and I was trying to figure out what it was. Last Saturday, we had a dinner in the backyard with Jenna and her family, Dennis' sister Debbie and her husband Jim, their daughter Heather and her husband Kyle, and their son Zander. The age range: two 2 year olds and one 80 year old. Four couples, one widow, one caregiver, four children.

This is the model we are testing. Can a person with Alzheimers be incorporated into family life? Can they live at home? Do the benefits of family life outbalance the practical problems/challenges/headaches/  rigors of living with adult who has advancing dementia? 

The ratio of caregivers to patient around that table was 13:1. Thirteen of us did not have Alzheimers. One did. Mother was very comfortable being part of the group. The conversation was free flowing, and Mother participated. At one point she volunteered the information that Marcie, who was sitting next to her, was a very good person and deserved all the best things in life.

Marcie, by the way, agrees with that statement.

Does living with your family confer powerful but invisible benefits similar to the micronutrients found in fresh vegetables which you cannot find in vitamin pills?

Mother was surrounded by relatives in the backyard of her own house. Her birdbath, her mini-trampoline, her raspberry bushes and roses. Was she there as a charity, because she was wearing diapers and being told not to eat toys? Or was she there in the place of honor, since she was giving us this setting. We were there because of Mother. She had planned her life so that this dinner could happen. 

Mother took many steps to plan for her own old age. She did everything right, as far as providing the legal directives, the pension, the health insurance, the home ownership, the well educated offspring, the model of helping others who are helpless ( I saw this up close when she worked with Gill and me to secure Susie's guardianship, something which did not flow out of her natural tendencies or personality traits, but was motivated solely out of concern for Susie) and a entire life of non smoking and non drinking. She did everything possible to care for herself, and she valued her family.

Sitting around the table in her backyard was the result: a micro community which is "healthified" by her (her example, her bookcases, her birdbath) and which "healthifies" her back (by finding the right caregivers, reminding her not to eat toys). 

This is the model the Fremont Street Center for Healthy Aging is experimenting with.  Is it possible that some ways of living together endow health, just as some foods endow health, or certain levels of activity endow health. The intergenerational approach of the Fremont Street Center for Healthy Aging is not exactly new. Why was it discarded? When Bart, who will be three in November, visits Mother, it is super apparent that caring for toddlers and caring for people with dementia is almost exactly the same job. 

Once we get to the bottom of this research question, we will move onto the second topic of interest to Fremont Street research staff. Does Alzheimers, all by itself, cause isolation and emotional distress? Or is it the way people with Alzheimers are treated which causes isolation and emotional distress.