Bringing comfort

~ Cape Girardeau woman creates Comfort Cart to help Alzheimer's patients.

Joan Talley of Cape Girardeau made a promise to her husband Chris who, in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, expressed concern that he would become a burden to her, even possibly hurting her.

"I said 'No matter where you go, I will find you,'" Joan said. "'I will never let you be lost.' That means finding someone when his physical body is being lost, but also you know where his mental body is."

Talley has found something that can calm Alzheimer's patients and helps those who care for them. She has shared her discovery with Southeast Hospital, where she and Chris were once nurse anesthetists, as well as with Saint Francis Medical Center.

Talley has outfitted a push cart with brightly-colored toys, puzzles, stuffed animals and small photo albums.

Known as the Comfort Cart, it holds items that help calm and soothe patients suffering from Alzheimer's, dementia or confusion.

"Most of the time a patient comes into the hospital it's not for a diagnosis of Alzheimer's," said Tabitha Matthews, a recreational therapist at Southeast. "They were sent over for other medical problems. They can't process like you and I. It's frightening for them to be here."

Joan has researched Alzheimer's disease ever since Chris, now 66, was diagnosed 11 years ago. She watched him regress as her grandchildren grew, and saw that the children's toys that matched their development attracted him as he steadily declined. In her research, she came across a book, "The Forgetting" by David Shenk, which mentions research done by New York University neurologist Barry Reisburg. Reisburg coined the term "retrogenesis," meaning "back to birth."

Reisberg also charts how children develop cognitively, and react to situations, in the same stages that Alzheimer's patients decline.

"There is a logic and order to the destruction," Joan said. "We are asking these people who are now going back through the developmental ages to do it without toys. This is too much to ask."

Chris is in the final stages of Alzheimer's. Joan is able to care for him at home with the help of the toys and other items that keep his attention. By holding his attention, the toys and other items also keep him calm and make life easier for Joan to keep him with her so that he will never feel lost.

Reducing stress

Chris sits at home in a chair holding a brightly colored ball. It helps for Alzheimer's patients to have something familiar to hold in their hand, she said. Periodically, she wipes his face lovingly and speaks softly to him. If she holds up a book, his eyes track her movement. He also focuses on a cage holding two songbirds nearby. He looks at a visitor to his room, but there is no reaction, no recognition. In front of him is a television turned to a tape of soothing music and comforting scenes, and a lava lamp glows and burbles. The handsome man Joan married more than 30 years ago is now at an infant's developmental level. The difference is that the infant will remember he is loved; Chris can't.

But he can hold onto a ball. He watches the birds. He has familiar objects around him that he can touch. Like an infant, if he doesn't have anything to do at his level, he gets agitated. Toys distract him, keep him occupied, keep his stress level down.

An Alzheimer's patient taken out of his familiar environment and brought to a hospital will become agitated and even combative if frightened. A patient who is working a puzzle or paging through a soft book is not going to panic and push away a nurse trying to administer medicine or give him a bath. Having something familiar nearby also comforts the patient if he wakes up during the night, Matthews said. Often family members slip familiar photographs into a small album from the Comfort Cart, giving the patient something from home to keep with him.

Joan gave the first stocked cart about a year and a half ago, and since then about once a month, Matthews goes out and replenishes it from a small budget set aside for the cart. Because of health concerns, a patient gets to keep whatever item he or she takes from the cart.

Southeast Hospital also offers a Comfort Channel, a closed circuit television channel available on all television sets in patients' rooms. LaDonna Mills of the hospital says the comfort channel broadcasts soft, soothing music and scenes around the clock. When a patient wakes in the middle of the night, he hears the familiar music he heard during the day and is less likely to panic. The scenes on the screen also serve as a night light.

The Comfort Cart and Comfort Channel are there to help other family members assure their loved ones that while they may be confused about where they are, they, like Chris Talley, will never be lost.

lredeffer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160