MIAMI: Since Diane’s husband received a dementia diagnosis in early 2014, at age 50, their family of four has been taking things slowly.
The bouts of memory loss and confusion that characterize the disease have grown more common, pushing him to leave his full-time job as a mechanical engineer, where trying to recall information on command proved too stressful. He now spends his time mountain biking, seeing loved ones and helping around the house.
“What we really focus on is now,” said Diane, who requested that her last name and her husband’s first and last names not be used. “It takes the pressure off having to remember things. And with that pressure taken off, he actually does remember things.”
That’s a useful lesson for people living with dementia, who must grapple with deteriorating memory, concentration, social behavior and other basic functions in their daily lives. In November, Diane and her husband sought to deepen that concentration on the present by joining a Bay Area-based clinical study assigning them to care for horses.
By grooming, walking and petting the animals, the couple learned to tune into the horses’ evolving moods and needs. They also learned the intrinsic value of caring for another — a virtue that people can lose sight of in the day-to-day stress of taking care of someone with a degenerative illness.
Not being able to remember things that were once familiar can be frightening, especially for people in their 40s with early onset dementia, said Nancy Schier Anzelmo, a gerontology professor at California State University, Sacramento. As people lose the ability to recall information or perform certain tasks, they may become depressed and anti-social.
“If someone’s on that trajectory, they become more isolated,” Schier Anzelmo said. “They might forget they’re meeting their friends for coffee, and the friends stop calling because they get annoyed. The person living with the disease needs to feel empowered — not that this is a downward trajectory, but that they still have purpose and focus. Maybe that means doing something they never tried before.”
Schier Anzelmo and senior living consultant Paula Hertel helped found the Connected Horse Research Study, a collaboration between Stanford University and the nonprofit group Connected Horse, which was founded to raise money for the study. The goal is to build confidence in people with dementia and improve relationships between them and the loved ones caring for them.
The person living with dementia gets to see what it feels like to care for another being, and a loved one gets a better understanding of the importance of providing care, Hertel said.
“It’s a nonjudgmental, mutual respect with the horses,” Hertel said. “When care partners learn to break down those dynamics for themselves, they also start to become better care partners.”