Alzheimer’s Care Center Helps ‘Those in Bondage’

Joy Glenner recalls watching as her father “nearly fell apart” caring for her mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. But that painful memory has led to creation of the county’s second day-care center for Alzheimer’s patients.

Glenner and her husband spearheaded a drive that led to last week’s opening of a new day-care center here “to give freedom to those held in bondage” by Alzheimer’s, the disease that destroys brain cells. An estimated 10,000 people in the county have Alzheimer’s.

The nonprofit Alzheimer’s Family Center, run by the San Diego chapter of the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Assn., is at 2017 Felicita Road.

As chairman of the Alzheimer’s association, Glenner and her husband, George, a pathologist and director of the UC San Diego brain bank for Alzheimer’s disease research, were instrumental in the opening of a similar center in downtown San Diego almost four years ago. It was the state’s first center to deal exclusively with Alzheimer’s sufferers.

“The centers offer families a chance to postpone putting their loved ones into nursing homes, at an average cost of $2,000 a month,” Joy Glenner said. The centers, which are affiliated with the UCSD School of Medicine, allow families to get professional care for victims one day at a time, she said.

Twenty-two Alzheimer’s victims, at various stages of the disease, are in the North County center’s $25-a-day program. The program includes outdoor walks, exercise, music therapy and group activities. The Escondido center, a remodeled three-bedroom house, is licensed to serve 30 patients a day.

A scholarship program has been started for those unable to afford full payment, Glenner said.

The North County center, like the one in San Diego, retains the look of a home because people respond better in a homelike atmosphere than in an institution, said Pat Jury, director of the San Diego center. Workers are encouraged to wear “everyday clothes” to add to the informal mood.

It is staffed by two nurses, a licensed social worker, an activities director, and six volunteers trained to work with Alzheimer’s patients. Workers will be added as enrollment increases, Glenner said. The center also offers services, such as counseling and crisis intervention, for the “other victims” of Alzheimer’s--the care-givers.

“From my own experience with my mother, I’ve found that the disease effects the whole family,” Glenner said. “It takes a herculean effort to care for a victim because, in most cases, it involves five to 15 years of around-the-clock care.”

Glenner said she has seen too many families broken mentally, physically and financially by the disease.

The day-care centers give these other “victims” a respite from constantly having to tend to someone else’s needs, she said.

The center allows families to turn over the care of their loved ones to professionals from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, so that relatives can return to work, take some time off or run a few errands without feeling guilty, Glenner said.

Funding for the $175,000 center came from a $155,000 grant by the Escondido City Council and contributions from community groups and private donors, Glenner said. She said the grant paid for the half-acre property, but donations funded the remodeling needed for the safety and convenience of the disabled--such as equipping bathrooms for the handicapped and turning sliding glass doors into windows so that patients would not walk through them.