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- Written by Kim Klugh Kim Klugh
Five million. That’s the number of Americans living with Alzheimer’s disease, according to statistics published on the Alzheimer’s Association website. Every 60 seconds, someone in the United States develops the disease.
Considered to be an epidemic by the Alzheimer’s Association, it has become the sixth-leading cause of death in the country.
Patricia Wang has become well versed on these statistics, and they have moved her to action. Wang is a woman on a two-fold mission—to build community awareness regarding Alzheimer’s disease while providing support to Alzheimer’s patients, their caregivers, and loved ones.
“So many know someone affected by Alzheimer’s,” says Wang, and since it is a “progressive and irreversible neurodegenerative disease, it generates a lot of stress on families.”
Wang was formerly a nurse at Reading Health Rehabilitation Hospital (now the HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital), where she worked on the specialized head injury unit for five years. She moved to Lancaster in 1979, and in 2000, when she joined St. Joseph Catholic Church, she immersed herself in parish volunteer activities. She took communion to the sick and homebound and helped with parish religious-education classes for children.
After attending an in-service meeting in the Harrisburg Diocese to learn more about how to help parish families whose children were diagnosed with autism, she ended up becoming St. Joseph’s parish advocate for people with disabilities.
When she assumed that role, Monsignor Thomas Smith had been Wang’s pastor, so she approached him to inquire how she should carry out the work. His response became her mantra: “Find a need and fill it.”
So Wang reached out and found parishioners who were dealing with handicap accessibility issues and discovered others who could benefit from sign language. She researched autism and other learning challenges so she could offer support to those who were volunteer teachers of religious education in her parish.
Wang originally became aware of someone with Alzheimer’s when she took communion to a parishioner who was a resident in the dementia unit at the Mennonite Home in Lancaster. Wang tried to engage the woman by singing to her and prompting her with traditional Catholic prayers, to which the woman responded.
When Wang met with the family, she saw the devastation that the disease brings with it for loved ones as memories fade away and cognitive abilities decline.
It was while she continued her research about the disease and came across the benefits of sensory stimulation for Alzheimer’s patients that an idea for a project took shape.
“Sensory stimulation,” says Wang, includes “any objects or activities that engage the senses,” thus triggering or stimulating a response or reaction. This can be “anything through your senses,” Wang says, including tactile or touch, visual, auditory, and olfactory.
Light therapy, art activities, music, sand trays, weighted blankets, and memory books with photographs are all examples of ways to prompt the senses, since they “give patients something to focus on,” says Wang.
Another example that has had beneficial effects on people with Alzheimer’s is aromatherapy, which uses essential oils like lavender and lemon balm to stimulate the sense of smell.
Tactile sensory objects can vary in texture and material construction—anything from velvet, satin and corduroy, and sandpaper, to smooth, stone tile pieces and carpet samples. Tactile stimulation can also be administered in the form of gentle hand and foot massages. As the senses are engaged, memories and emotions can be triggered. When patients feel relaxed and safe, their moods may improve along with their self-esteem and general sense of well-being.
The use of sensory stimulation can also lead to the reduction of medication for certain patients as they become calmer and less agitated for extended periods of time.
It was with this growing arsenal of knowledge that Wang organized volunteers from her parish to create a collection of tactile sensory objects that were donated to the 51 units in the Memory Support Center at St. Anne’s Retirement Community.
After giving a basic description of what a sensory object can be, Wang stepped back and let the creativity work through the hands of her volunteers. The outcome was an assortment of sensory items that can reduce agitation, boredom, or irritability in Alzheimer’s patients, thereby increasing their quality of life.
Those parishioners who enjoy knitting made knitted objects, while others crocheted or sewed. Some volunteers crafted activity mats loaded with laces, beads, and yarn. Additional items were fashioned out of fake fur or lambskin and turned into pieces called fidget quilts and twiddle muffs.
“The sky’s the limit,” Wang says and explains that one gentleman constructed a wooden board, including latches and hardware, that Alzheimer’s disease sufferers can manipulate by turning and twisting.
In conjunction with World Alzheimer’s Day in September 2015, Wang also contacted the Lancaster Public Library and was given permission to set up a display entitled: “We Remember with Love.”
How does Wang hope to further her mission for those whose lives are affected by Alzheimer’s?
Studies have shown how personalized music playlists can be used to unlock and reconnect Alzheimer’s patients with their memories, enabling them to experience sustained periods of reawakening and joy. Wang wants to make that happen for as many local Alzheimer’s patients as possible.
Inspired by the documentary Alive Inside: A Story of Music and Memory, an Audience Award film at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, Wang’s goal is to add an auditory component in her efforts and use music as the vehicle to support Alzheimer’s patients and their families and caregivers.
Although she is in touch with the Alive Inside Foundation for this project, she says, “I’m a big believer in working locally.”
In that spirit, she hopes to enlist Lancaster community members and businesses to serve as venues for an array of musical concerts in a fundraising effort to purchase headsets and iPods for Alzheimer’s patients in the area so they can benefit from music’s power to reach the heart and soul.
“There are so many challenges with Alzheimer’s,” Wang says, “and I want to cultivate empathy and a connection to support families who have been touched by this disease.”