Compassionate Creation
With the help of the day care center staff, they play games and participate in exercises typical of preschoolers. A simple puzzle provides an entertaining challenge for one; another concentrates on spooning colored sand into a jar, a pretty present he’ll give to the person he loves most. Later, they’ll sit around a table on the patio and laugh and giggle while trying to solve a riddle based on one of their names. They all seem to be enjoying themselves, though as the afternoon grows late, some begin to ask when they’ll be picked up.
These are not 4-year-olds at that wonderful stage of life when every day brings fascinating discoveries about the world and each newly mastered task leads to a growing sense of self-confidence. These are the men and women of the Alzheimer’s Family Center in Escondido, whose brightest days lie behind them, not ahead. The activities they engage in on this afternoon are not the building blocks for expanding intellects. Rather, they exist only for the pleasure of the moment.
Alzheimer’s disease is a disorder that destroys vital parts of the brain and causes the irreversible degeneration of a person’s mind. As the disease progresses over the course of five, 10 or even 15 years, the victim requires constant care. An Alzheimer’s patient may become incontinent or may forget how to perform such basic functions as swallowing or walking.
The recently opened day care center in Escondido, and another in Hillcrest that opened in 1982, are testament to the dedication and hard work of Joy Glenner, whose mother died of a similar brain disease, and her husband, Dr. George G. Glenner, a pathologist at the UC San Diego Medical School and an important Alzheimer’s researcher.
Operated by a nonprofit corporation sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Disorders Assn., the centers provide the opportunity for those responsible for Alzheimer’s patients to leave them in comfortable, safe surroundings so that the spouse or other family members can go to work or simply have a few hours away from the all-consuming chore of patient care.
The idea for the centers was born in the middle of the night several years ago as the Glenners worked to avert a tragedy in the stressed-out family of an Alzheimer’s patient.
“What are you doing in the morning?” Joy Glenner remembers her husband asking as the crisis subsided.
“Nothing,” she responded, “Why?”
“Because we’re going to go out and start today taking care of the living,” he said.
And so they have, beginning by raising $35,000 to rent and renovate the Hillcrest home, which now cares for an average of 22 patients a day. They then won approval for a $155,000 Community Development Block Grant from the Escondido City Council and $112,500 in state funding to buy and remodel the Escondido facility.
George Glenner earns his livelihood studying people with Alzheimer’s disease. But neither he nor his wife could have been expected to turn their compassion for the families of the victims into a crusade. This community is better off because they did.
