Dealing with dementia — Conference to focus on needs of caregivers

The future looks a little brighter for Alzheimer's patients, say pharmaceutical researchers, who report that by 2009 there may be new drugs that stop the disease in its tracks. In the meantime, the families on the front lines of the dementia war are worn out from taking care of loved ones who may not recognize them.

This interplay of hope and exhaustion will be the backdrop for a Dementia Care conference for caregivers, social workers, support groups, administrators and people in the early stages of memory loss. The conference, "Pillars of Dementia Care: Research, Collaboration, Validation, Creativity," runs all day Friday at the Rose Wagner Center, 138 W. Broadway.

"Just to make it from day to day, you have to fool yourself," says Erik Stern, whose mother — "one of the most beautiful women you've ever seen," he reports — now lives in an alternate reality. It is this in-between place for both mother and son that Stern explores in his sad-funny dance-theater work "Demolition Derby: When a Mind Loses Its License to Drive." The piece will be performed Friday and Saturday in the theater.

Stern, who teaches dance at Weber State University, says the "subtle and shocking" contrasts of Alzheimer's — "between what was and is, between what I'm feeling and what I'm saying, between outside and inside" — are like nothing he's ever experienced before.

"Does she know who you are?" the reporter asks Stern about his mother, once a yoga teacher and now a 79-year-old woman beset with confusion and paranoia." "Define that," Stern replies, then says maybe it's the same way a 6-month-old knows who you are but doesn't know your name or where you grew up. "It's a level of knowledge that's almost pre-thinking knowledge." A relationship in those circumstances "is based on presence and touch," Stern finally concluded. "Even though I'm a dancer, I was slow to realize that."

The Dementia Care conference will also feature keynote talks by Dr. Daniel Christensen of the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute and Myriad Genetics; John Bowling, vice president of Silverado Senior Services; and Dr. Norman Foster, director of the University of Utah Center for Alzheimer's Care, Imaging and Research.

Alzheimer's is just one (although the most common) of 80 different diseases that cause dementia, sometimes Alzheimer's doesn't include dementia, and dementia doesn't always mean memory loss, says Foster. On top of that, many physicians aren't up to date on the latest dementia research, he adds. "Our understanding of these disorders has advanced remarkably in the past 10 years; things are moving extremely fast."

No wonder then that patients and their families are "at sea" about what to do, he says.