FULL STORY: Dementia - The Unspooling Mind

tonight on sixteen by nine nobody can help me the human toll of dementia Arni night yeah yeah heart-wrenching decisions for families yeah okay dad there is still a stigma about it people still don't want to really talk about what it does to your mom or your dad the desperate search for care for those who can no longer care for themselves we're all aging and we still don't have any cure for dementia seeking help in a place of no return in a country far from home we started some revolution a new way of thinking about quality of life one German newspaper likened it to shipping out your trash I see myself as a pioneer if we can provide something like family care and I think it works here's Carolyn Jarvis if there were a country called dementia its population would be larger than Canada's the condition affects 44 million people and strikes so often and so arbitrarily that it's being called an epidemic it unspools the mind without any cure in sight it's why tonight we present a special one-hour edition of sixteen by nine taking you inside the world of dementia on three continents and we begin in the Netherlands in a village inhabited entirely by dementia patients a place that could revolutionize care my Hut whoo you know fingers crossed she never gets to the point where she ever needs a nursing home the world realizes that dementia is coming for everybody and it's it's coming for us too yes since the beginning I didn't I even did not believe it that day when we drove her in there um my sister and I were just dreading it cuz we thought she's gonna you know she's gonna recognize it and she's gonna say don't put me in here what should it be what should life be for people living in a nursing home on the outskirts of Amsterdam interwoven in the fabric of the medieval village of wisp there was a place with no yesterday no tomorrow there is only now all the people living here have severe dementia it still can enjoy normal life social contacts being a person welcome to dementia village population 152 there's only one way in and one way out they all died here this is really the last year's and life should be good they feel we are here together I'm not alone on this world and I can have a good life five years ago Yvonne van imma wrong in and her Dutch colleagues opened the doors to dementia village and started a revolution it's like a finish the neighborhood connect a coffee can have a stroll so like in normal life all the doors open automatically except the exit onto a surrounding outside world street signs in dementia village reassure everyone that things are just as they should be we have a lot of visitors from all over the world coming in and some people say this is a make-believe world and I say what's make-believe over here we don't act as if this is a normal life it's normal life so year Lisa misses the brand we ring because I mean it's their home good morning good morning good morning we write CUDA bran shares a common living space with five others who also have dementia you see this is my my place there are all my children that's yeah what one girl then second girl said girl and then a boy he said mum here is a place for you and so I'm here this is nice place here for me it still works a bit the cost of care is almost $8,000 a month but the Dutch government subsidizes mrs. Gibran and all her neighbors how much they pay is based on income but never exceeds $3,600 I do everything from to be busy the most important thing is that you're living that you're having a normal life that you have fun in life and that you need care well that's not nice but you shouldn't feel it all day there that I'm living but being accepted to live here isn't easy right now there's a waiting list of 82 people this is me from poha yeah like former pro bowler who hates us you know wish I knew you've aged Oh doggies y'all don't let alone haha I come from Sumatra weird clothes yeah oh yeah she needs to make more to her feature Sonam defeats Omaha - Hey Dude - ah - Varrick okay that's all she'll know not too hard you see it's I have to go also thank you thank you very much yeah I'm on the road yeah the Han dicho five time zones away there is a place with no locks at all no Gates or fences in the Land of Smiles the demented are deposited by their European families free to live in the moment until they take their last breath the cost of caring for dementia patients has skyrocketed in recent years now pegged at 600 billion dollars globally it's also created an industry of medical tourism but as you'll see coming up in Thailand this is meant as a last stop honey you beyond the bustle of Thailand's northern city of Chiang Mai there is a quiet street and eight houses were the inhabitants occupy a private and mysterious world they pretend like they are normal normal people living in a village Arni night the whole atmosphere I can really feel that they they are happy in general they're happy 4 p.m. at the care center called ban hemline chai in English it means care from the heart they are an intimate Club of Europeans only 12 people live here entrusted by their families to spend their last days in the care of a Swiss expat Martin Woodley a psychologist who used to work for Doctors Without Borders I see myself as a pioneer in Thailand the family is the most important Singh and if you if we can provide something like family cared and I think it works honeycomb become the tomorrow Gary is creating his own language the cake given I do not understand and somehow somehow it works downs and yo he was in an institution with many many people together and then he came here and we don't have to do to give them medicine to keep them calm to keep them in a closed area he has a kind of freedom I have to take life as it is and as it comes you get used to it Elizabet came here because she couldn't stay alone anymore and for her and others it was too much to take care either she goes to the to the care center in in in Switzerland or she she try to come to our place how long am I already here you stay here for a year and half when did I come yes for year four years ago years ago I came uh-huh okay I'm already four years here each person has one caregiver on their side all the time we don't have to keep it in a keep out project in offense yes it is secret and Aaron there from Germany his wife is suffering from Alzheimer disease and also parking zone which is quite a difficult combination ulrich currently is facing a unique struggle of his own his wife Susanna only 65 years old is slipping away yeah we are sailing we are a hiking reading listening music going to concert yeah since the beginning I didn't I even did not believe it now for Suzanne its I think it's very difficult because she fears and she doesn't know exactly what's going on and but something is going on Ulrich and Susanna came here from Switzerland 16 weeks ago now they're in the last hours of a four-month trial run before Ulrich we'll have to decide if he leaves his wife behind lynching come on Amos acted up life Caston new instructor beta in the human psyche normally I can read about half an hour the image paper were the aapke shop in Berlin it's calming her down and sometimes she understands the jokes and sometimes not that doesn't matter it's the most important thing yes I do something for her she understands quite good so English and French - in German - of course but she can't speak it more anymore I'm very hard she knows that we are here in Thailand yes I believe sometimes she knows it's where we are sometimes she recognizes and children yes in Switzerland celebre is extremely expensive and to give somebody in this institution this means it costs you about 12,000 Canadian dollars only two or three take care of for 10 to 20 people I thought there must be something else hmm for around-the-clock one-on-one care in Thailand auric will pay thirty eight hundred dollars a month one-third of what he would face back in Switzerland in Cecil Susi is sleeping here and on sees things take care is also sleeping in the same room because Suzy she is standing up three to eight times a night if she's caretaker Kamsa morning she gets a kiss never we would happen something in the in Europe if you kiss a patient in in Europe also you will lose your job if somebody is dying you know exactly now it's finished but this kind of illness it's one step until next step until next step finally mentally you have no more sin the same person in front of you as when you started with this person I'm afraid maybe she realized maybe more sand I am thinking and I will hurt her if I'm telling her you have to stay here in 24 hours Ulric were board a plane to leave Thailand still unsure if he should leave his wife of 41 years behind nobody can help me even some professionals they are talking talking talking but it doesn't help me to take his his kind of decision that you are alone and we will have that heart-wrenching decision coming up in the broadcast but first our story takes a personal turn for us at Global as our national news anchor Donna Friesen opens up about her family and its battle with dementia that's next I've never seen xiety first she forgot what I did for a living and I'd you know be sitting on the set and saying oh mom I'm just about to do the news you know well can I call you back she'd say oh you do the news dear what's the sauce I missed that now because then at some point she forgot how to dial a phone good evening and thanks for joining us it seems impossible but four days after that Boeing triple7 when the wind blew in the winter in a winter storm the house would actually shake and I have little snowdrift you know in my bedroom window because it would blow through the cracks I look back on it now and think wow that's been difficult for my mother to raise these three children and you know we were very poor you know we didn't call it dementia then what people would say is oh she's going senile and as a kid I didn't I didn't know what's that man I just thought oh that's what happens when you get old as I summertime and wedding it's an emotional wrench for Donna Friesen to see her mom these days it means saying goodbye to her Sam Lucas I was hoping that at some point she would be able to move here and live with us but then when she was here I realized how well she was masking her memory loss she would every day forget where the bathroom was in the house every day she would withdraw money from the bank and then squirrel it away I'd find it tucked in drawers in various places and then she'd say someone's stolen my money and then one day she went out for a walk and she got lost Donna's mom leaves 2000 kilometres away in a place that's been part of the freezin family for two generations my mother put her father there and he died there and and she said at the time that she would rather die than ever go in there and I really took that to heart you know I thought you know fingers crossed she never gets to the point where she ever needs a nursing home but that day when we drove her in there my sister and I were just dreading it because we thought she's gonna you know she's gonna recognize it and she's gonna say don't put me in here it's been a tense week unsure if her mother would survive an ammonia attack and now wondering if she'll recognize the visitor from Vancouver mom no it's Donna oh hi it's a beautiful color on you too this blue yeah that's just your eyes and mum and dad their mom in the blue sweater and dad's next to her we never talked about whether she had Alzheimer's or dementia we never you know verbalized it never said it we're just gonna go for a little ride down the hall okay yeah okay daytime shift on the second floor five nurses and a dozen or so health care aides supervise 102 long-term care residents half of them are in wheelchairs and almost all suffered dementia I brought some photos mom Oh maybe we could have a look at them yeah she was taking all the pictures out of the photo albums first she was just taking them out and stacking them up and then she started ripping them up the dementia or Alzheimer's or I know was making her just slowly rip apart her past her life was all just and you remember him dad yeah mm-hmm he's just down the hall now hmm yeah Danah was about minus 50 with the wind show one of those terrible days and he was went out for what and my mother was in the house but she didn't know that he'd gone out she hadn't heard the door he had been out in the snow for we don't know how long at that point he had frostbite on his fingers his knees its toes he had had a heart attack and he had hypothermia and since then he has just slowly descended into dementia Henry Friesen would never return to the farm from the hospital he was shipped to the first available bed for long-term care in Winnipeg he walked into a room thought it was his tried to get into bed and there was someone in there because it wasn't his room so the guide punched his lights out knocked teeth out and it's all bruised and yeah pretty horrible he never should have been allowed to walk down the hallway by himself he should have someone should have been with him so that they're directing him because he can't see now now the place that they're in is much better well my dad was first in this nursing home he was still walking but he his dementia was fairly advanced so he had to be in a locked Ward because the fear of course is that he would wander out confinement to a wheelchair brought a kind of freedom for Henry he was released from the lockdown ward for the first time in five years he'd be under the same roof as his wife of 57 years sharing the same floor but perhaps too late for either to realize hi dad my dad it's Donna it's Donna nice to see you dad sometimes dad opens his eyes but well today there is still a stigma about it people still don't want to really talk about it and they don't want to talk about what it does to you and what it does to your mom or your dad you know my son starts to see changes in me god forbid he can say hey mom I think you know something might be happening you should go to the doctor and the doctor can say yes it seems like you're developing dementia here I can give you this this is gonna help you you know there's something we can do they'll come back and see you a little later okay okay see in a little bit okay of the world's leading developed countries Canada is the only one that doesn't have a national strategy for dealing with dementia much of the burden of care falls on family members like Donna it's why some are taking their relatives elsewhere but will a husband of 41 years be able to part with his wife and leave her in Thailand for better care that emotional decision next I've been wanting my mother come here quite a while she's 92 and now she's got dementia and she can't get the level of care she needs in the UK and rather than sitting back and being frightened I'd rather do something about it Peter Brown is a man with big dreams he's a British entrepreneur who owns a four-star tourist resort in Chiang Mai where he lives with his Thai wife and two children okay so every day my children come to play dumping it in the bed and something we have to tell them no you can do that this is Grandma row in 33 hours Peter's mother Joyce will join the family becoming the first dementia guests at the Chiang Mai Kerr resort we're in start-up mode so we're a four-star hotel resort change into a care facility I hope we've got about 70 people here having the time of their life getting the care they need you a solitary bulldozer prepares the ground for an expansion to accommodate a new kind of foreign tourists the kind who never leaves dementia victims unable to get the care they need in their own countries so the builders are coming first week in March to to do this knock down the reality war make it Baker revarnished all these floors we've got a lot of a lot of land we've got a thousand trees they've got a lake we've got two swimming pools we've got Gardens the money's invested the bank loans assign the tie system produces thousands of trained nurses a year and thousands of trained assistant nurses a year Thailand is already known for its medical tourism the industry pegged it almost four billion dollars a year well I like about estimator unit there's only five people so they can create strong relationships with the carers this latest business model that has entrepreneurs like Peter Brown buying in is called the granny export business and it's touched a raw nerve back in Europe one German newspaper likened it to shipping out your trash you've got an elderly parent that you want to give the best possible care you can and the other options are abroad then why not look at them after a long flight from England Peters mother Joyce has arrived at her new home but the man who opened the first dementia resort for Westerners in Thailand Martin Woodley is concerned about what will happen to care facilities become too large and impersonal if we start make large-scale institution here to me it's dangerous this kind of trend this is not a paradise here it's a very nice environment but we have to we have to watch very carefully who for whom is really the good place here even the intimacy of the family environment at ban Camlann chai is no comfort to all recurrently a husband who confronts his loneliest hour the last night in a foreign land before a long pilgrimage home last night is it's a record of my wife Susanna she stand up 14 time and his caretaker helps her counts her let her to bet again in the beginning I thought I have a lot of time she can no more speak she can only walk she can only listen I made in my life a lot of decision but this is the hardest part for Susanna I think it would see the best to stay here with a team of three good caretakers it's the best thing for her here I feel a bit guilty even if have stayed here already 16 weeks with her it's it's very hard to believe coming up the final chapter on our journey into dementia and the painful reality setting in stay with us with her husband of 41 years on his way back to Switzerland Susanna is alone in Thailand for the first time confronted with the reality of dementia later on they cannot reflect anymore that what's going on now is much easier for them Comfort may come when the memories fade but all reminders of the past haven't disappeared for everyone here in the same complex as Susanna Elizabeth is comforted by the familiarity of her granddaughter in Calgary thank you okay fine I'm on all day that awareness of her old life means this new one in Thailand doesn't feel quite right how are you homesick Oh sick Oh gates gates tchau tchau wicked both of you have a good time bye-bye thank you at Oak View place in Winnipeg its Donna's turn to say goodbye hi dad hi it's Donna yeah yes yes I came to visit you Mary looks like you had a haircut recently yeah hi buddy mm-hmm well I just came into town to visit to see you and mum and I'm gonna go back to Vancouver yeah okay dad maybe there's some little some little sliver of him in there that once in a while you know can see the light can see that we're there can see that mom is there and gives him some comfort the pain of this disease is often felt more by family who still hold the memories instead of those who've lost them it's not the mom you knew before it's not some mom you knew before and I think that's the hard part you know it's that's yes that even sharing memories now looking at pictures you can tell she's not yeah she doesn't recognize you anymore yeah anyway thank you for being so patient oh she did it dark pleasure okay mom well I'm gonna go for now okay I'm gonna come and visit again okay I'll see you again soon okay okay okay I love you bye yeah really hope there will be a cure but the scientists say that will take some well maybe 30 years I do this to have to the fresh air and the moving maybe we started some revolution about a new way of thinking about quality of life in 20 years or so maybe I'll be living here and I want quality of life too no matter the city the country the people around them the closing days for someone with dementia all end the same in an unrecognizable place surrounded by strangers where is my family in Switzerland and Canada it's a minute of you children why am I here so many nothing connects you okay okay now where am I now Kylie Thailand hi come and fetch love of its urge the committee to Lou I'll bring her back hold up then I have to leave so every week now Mao Zedong is warning but um pay me to hospital English record - way to go why do I not come and why do I live in sweet habits good ok since we began our program an hour ago another 900 people have been diagnosed with dementia they will join the ranks of people lined up for long term care in Canada the demand is expected to increase tenfold in the next generation costing almost 300 billion dollars a year that's more than the entire revenue of the country today we'll be right back tonight marks the end of another award-winning season for us here at sixteen by nine if you happen to have missed any of our episodes this year they're now all up on our website global sixteen by nine com here's a quick glimpse of what you can find there I have no desire to ever go back and live there I don't I don't think I could there was two Saints one don't let the bedbugs bite and they beat us and Hillier was a doughnut the boogeyman get you any got us we will not have women being blamed for rape anymore what do you think was going on there they were abducting him without question punch it I've always been attracted to the loudest fastest hardest thing did you is that the machine gun loading zero and that is our broadcast for tonight I'm Carolyn Jarvis from everyone here at sixteen by nine thanks for watching and have a great weekend Oh

Channel: Crime Beat TV

Views: 406,699

Keywords: 16x9, 16 x 9, 16 by 9, 16:9, Global TV, Global Television, Global News, Global Television Network (TV Network), Dementia (Disease Or Medical Condition), Dawna Friesen

Id: kkvIZaSfUxc

Length: 45min 7sec (2707 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 28 2014