The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Love, care can make all the difference here

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Jun 16, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Love, care can make all the difference here

Vidya Venkat

Families of dementia patients narrate their ordeals and how they cope with everyday problems

— PHOTO: R. SHIVAJI RAO

Consultant neurologist Deepak Arjundas at the meeting held at Dementia Club in Chennai on Sunday.

CHENNAI: Komagal Rajalakshmi had turned eerily silent during the last few years of her life. It seemed the prolific Tamil fiction writer and speaker had forgotten words ever since she became a victim of dementia. After a 14-year ordeal, she died in 2005.

Her brother-in-law V. Gurumoorthy, a professor at Sri Ramachandra Medical College, remembered the writer at a meeting held at Dementia Club in the city on Sunday.

“She had forgotten everything else, but always responded to my touch,” he recalled. He felt it was because he spent more time by her side than anyone else at home.

In India, an estimated 1.5 million elderly persons suffer from dementia, a disease with no cure. Consultant neurologist at Vijaya Hospital and Apollo Hospital Deepak Arjundas said medicines could only prevent the disease from getting worse. A loving touch and care, however, can make a lot of difference in the lives of patients.

Family members of a dementia patient often confine the person within the four walls of the house to keep them from wandering away. This can make the patient restless. A dementia patient suffers from a progressive loss in mental faculties, memory in particular. Other symptoms include impaired judgment, emotional imbalance, disturbed sleep/loud snoring, socially inappropriate behaviour and functional incontinence.

While memory lapses can occur in any one, in a dementia patient such incidents are unusually common.

S. Mani*, 63, said he recognised something was wrong with his wife when her Gita and Narayaneeyam class notes became incoherent by the day. “Her handwriting changed; she skipped important portions of the discourse, but whenever I asked her she argued she was listening attentively,” he said.

His doubts were confirmed when his wife once lost her way out in a crowded temple. “This was a temple we visited quite often and as usual I was waiting at the exit for her to finish the rounds. When she didn’t turn up for an hour, I went in and found that she had forgotten the direction…”

Looking after a dementia patient can be stressful indeed. Mr. Mani, for one, said he attends neurotherapy sessions himself to calm his nerves. The wife of J. Shankar*, a dementia patient for 20 years now, said he kept feeling below his lower lip and got angry when she appeared not to understand why. Later, his daughter found out he was missing the false teeth which she had removed out of fear that he would swallow them.

Dr. Gurumoorthy explained that dementia patients often used gestures to simply draw attention towards them. He recalled how Komagal too often nodded her head sadly when people at home ate food without offering it to her. “They are all like children. All we can do is to indulge them,” he said.

Mr. Shankar, who was present at the meeting, seemed to understand. Seated beside his wife, he urged her yet another time to start for home. Unable to pacify him, the woman obliged this time.

Dementia Club supports patients and caregivers. It organises meetings every month on second Sundays. Contact: 127, Marshalls Road, Egmore, Chennai-600008. Phone: 28511659/28511730.

To arrange for caregivers for the elderly contact Ravi Samuel of Vision Age India at 23721418 or write to: vai@visionageindia.org

(*Some n ames of dementia patients and their relatives have been changed to protect privacy.)

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu