Medical educator Raquella DaVilla of the Alzheimer’s Association of Greater New Jersey spoke at the Atrium Home, a senior citizen’s assisted living home, in Hamilton Park on Tuesday. DaVilla addressed both patients and professional caregivers on the facts concerning Alzheimer’s disease. According to DaVilla, the number of people in New Jersey diagnosed with the neurological disorder is approximately 350,000.
“The number nationwide is about four million,” said DaVilla.
Alzheimer’s causes memory loss, which results in dementia. “Dementia is the loss of intellectual functions such as thinking, remembering, and reasoning,” DaVilla explained.
While the cause of Alzheimer’s disease is still unknown, it appears to run in families, DaVilla noted.
“There is familial Alzheimer’s which goes directly from generation to generation,” said DaVilla. “The second kind is known as sporadic and will strike different people in a family without going from parent to child.”
DaVilla said a number of treatments have been developed for the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s, which are depression and brain trauma.
“However, the disease is still fatal in the final stages,” DaVilla stated.
Alzheimer’s causes the death of brain cells, DaVilla said, creating a physical shrinkage of the brain.
“This is why there is a decline in the physical function of the disease’s victims,” DaVilla explained. “The space between the spheres of the brain widens and the synapses cannot connect.”
Other results of the disease are, in the early mild stage, are confusion about time and place, forgetting of simple statements and repeating of sentences.
“There are also, in some cases, changes in personality,” DaVilla stated. DaVilla stressed that early victims of the disease become socially and emotionally withdrawn.
DaVilla told the story of one Alzheimer’s patient who informed his nurses that some one was out to get him.
“When the nurses calmed the man down and asked him who was after him,” DaVilla stated. “He pointed to his own reflection in the mirror.”
DaVilla told her listeners, “It is important to them to be treated with the dignity that you would want to be treated with.”
Lora Zommer, associate guest relations manager at The Atrium, also spoke about her expiernce with Alzheimer’s patients.
“There are things that people with the affliction cannot do that they once did,” said Zommer. “This does not mean that they are helpless.”
Zommer recalled the story of patient she knew who had memory problems. The patient was asked to help stuff envelopes in an office.
“She became very engaged in her activity,” Zommer said. “The women left us at the end of the day with a smile on her face.”
More importantly for Vommer, the patient had been mentally stimulated by the activity.
There are two Alzheimer’s disease support groups in Hudson County. One is in Jersey City at the Franciscan Home and Rehabilitation Center, and can be reached at (201) 451-9000, ext. 223. The second support group is at the Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center and their phone number is (201) 865-8542. The Alzheimer’s Association of greater New Jersey can be reached at 1-800-272-3900 and their Web site is: www.alz.org.