Betty Sinclair, Director of Support and Education for Alzheimer Soceity of BC, beings the experience by putting popcorn inside the shows of Nurse Celerina Roque.

Nurse Celerina Roque is being prepped for her dementia experience.

Sinclair says, "once you start to experiencing pain, it starts to impact your ability to think or concentrate."

Gardening gloves, with splints inside, reduce Celerina's sense of touch. And weights stiffen her wrist and ankle, affecting her balance. Next come the goggles:

Sinclair: "You know what it's like to have glucoma where your vision is completely blurred."

And a taste of what it's like to be fed crushed pills - in this case wheat grains - in applesauce.

And finally...Sinclair adds white noise.

"With dementia, people start to lose the ability to filter out sound. When we lose some of the senses that we work with everyday, we begin to lose our ability to concentrate, to think and to understand."

Just see how difficult it is for Celerina to do simple tasks.

Celerina Rogue, Nurse, says, "So hard, so frustrating, you want to open it (the bottle) and yet, you're not able too. My feet are hurting me and my hands are getting tired."

Sinclair comments, "we hear people coming out of the dementia experience saying wow, I really didn't understand what it's like, I will now be more patient."

Rod Gueon went through the entire program. He now uses a lot of hand gestures to communicate with his patients, "I would say motion my hands to drink water or eat. If you talk too fast, in my opinion, they can't really register per se, you have to emphasize."

This crash course certainly has made an impact on Celerina.

Celerina says, "I have lots of compassion for those patients, even more so now."

The dementia experience is being rolled out to caregivers working in Providence Health Care facilities. The Alzheimer's Society would like to see it's program taken to all caregivers in BC.

Monday May 29, 2006