Wine, Women, Dementia, and Caregiving
Wine, Women and Dementia is a new PBS documentary that looks into the lives of a few of the millions of unpaid family caregivers across the United States. While caregiving involves uncertainty and carries an emotional, physical, and financial toll, the family caregivers featured, find laughter with wine while meeting during a ’round-the-country road trip.
We meet Kitty Norton (aka Likety Glitz). While interviewing her parents for a video celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary, her mom, Gloria could not recall her husband’s name (Gary). Her father remained in denial for two years while tirelessly caring for his wife. During this time, Kitty’s mom was diagnosed with vascular dementia. Then tragedy struck, her father was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. Kitty and her sister, Lexie, vowed to take care of their mom at home just as their dad had done until his sudden passing.
Being stumped as to how to care for a loved one with dementia, Kitty started a blog at StumpedTownDementia.com and continues her advocacy at WineWomenandDementia.com.
From the PBS website—
“Seeking healing and comfort in community, a dementia family caregiver [takes a] road trip [across] the U.S. to swap caregiver stories of love, humor, and devotion with other family caregivers who share this hilariously heartbreaking end-of-life journey. [I]n a system that offers few resources or support, they find community, champion each other, and learn what it means to celebrate LIFE on the long road to death.”
After Kitty’s mom died, she and fellow caregiver and co-pilot, Beth set out in an RV on a 7,500 mile 26-day road trip to 27 states.
Among 16 million caregivers in the United States for people with dementia, Kitty and Beth’s journey features family caregivers caring for loved ones living with one or more of an estimated 100 types of dementia.
- Allyson’s 47-year-old husband, Evan, was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). This, after six years of doctors misdiagnosing him.
- Lindsay cared for her dad who was initially diagnosed with Parkinson’s and later, Lewy Body Dementia.
- Rosanne cared for her mom, Rose, one of 12 children of whom eight had cognitive issues.
- A caregiver who wondered why her husband was becoming a narcissistic A$$hole was “comforted” to learn from her husband’s former coworkers that they felt the same way. She was “relieved” to learn he had dementia. After a year of paying $10,000+ monthly for memory care, they could no longer afford it. They divorced to qualify for care on Medicaid.
No one understands caregiving until they’re a caregiver.
View Wine, Women, & Dementia on your local PBS station or click to watch Wine, Women, & Dementia online. This URL may connect you to a PBS station in Southern California. You may be asked to click on your local PBS station to watch this online.
For a transcript of this program click on the “Transcript” tab midway down the page: https://www.pbs.org/video/wine-women-dementia-afhkl7/#Transcript
Alzheimer’s Treatment Updates
To learn more about dementia treatments, Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI), CEO, Paola Barbarino interviewed Jeffrey Cummings, Professor of Brain Science & Health, on the current and future state of Alzheimer’s treatments.
View the one-hour YouTube video, here:
Initial highlights before a deeper dive into the complicated role of treatments balanced with patient safety:
- It takes ten years to get from a Phase I trial to Phase III, the most advanced stage of testing leading to regulatory review for potential approval. We need to reduce this time.
- We are progressing with biomarkers (blood tests and brain scans) that are more dependable than memory tests to help us determine if the drug is working.
- There are four classes of drugs in the pipeline.
A deeper dive into treatments to remove the amyloid protein (it’s complicated when weighed against patient safety) and tau proteins.
All this within the first 22 minutes of this one-hour video.
