The Alzheimer Society of Calgary, under which Cochrane falls, works 365 days a year to bring awareness and support about dementia to our community.

January is Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, and the Alzheimer Society would like to highlight some of the specific programs available to help patients, families, and caregivers.

Of course, the Alzheimer Society, like all organizations has been impacted by COVID-19 and has moved all of its presentations online plus a plethora of resources can be found there as well.

Rachel Clare, Director of Learning & Support Services with the Alzheimer Society of Calgary says, “We really wanted to focus this month not just on persons living with dementia but also caregivers. […] Clare adds, “We’re finding that about 1 in 5 Canadians has experienced caring for someone living with dementia so it’s impacting a lot of people. For a lot of caregivers, they may be the only person supporting the person living with dementia because of pandemic restrictions. And so not only do we have education sessions, but we also have what we call Recharge Sessions." For example, people can sign up to enjoy a virtual session to enjoy Music by Hannah (Soprano).

Overall, awareness about dementia has increased over the past number of years and Clare believes that is due to the fact that “There are more and more people living with dementia, it’s becoming more of an issue because people are speaking out about it. Over 500,000 Canadians live with dementia, and we actually expect that number to double by 2030 and in addition, young on-set dementia is increasing. So, what we have is a group of people that are young, they are still engaged with society, and they are experiencing these symptoms of dementia and they don’t want to disappear. They want to reduce the stigma surrounding dementia and they also have a louder voice and they’re looking for answers and they’re looking for better treatments."

Awareness and education about dementia start with recognizing the early signs. Clare explains because a lot of us are experiencing a lot of stress, due to the pandemic, we may be experiencing trouble performing simple tasks or even some memory loss but that is likely is a symptom of the time we are living in.

Dementia memory loss and other telltale signs are noticeably repetitive and impede a person's daily life. Clare says, “So when we’re looking at dementia, what we’re really looking at are things starting to impact daily living.”

Such signs include:

  • Forgetting things and not remembering them later such as driving to the store and forgetting that one drove and taking the bus home.
  • Asking the same question over and over.
  • Challenges with familiar tasks like making a sandwich or a cup of coffee.
  • Communication issues such as frequent trouble with word-finding or calling things by different or incorrect names.
  • Mixing up times and places.
  • Poor judgment like not wearing a coat on a very cold day.

The Alzheimer Society Calgary has many resources available for support and to educate but Rachel Clare wishes to let people know that, “Twice a year we have a Talking About Dementia event and January 31 at 6:30 is the next event and Dr. David Hogan will be presenting. He is a local specialist in geriatric medicine, and he is really good at making complex academic and research concepts interesting. So, if folks want to learn a little bit more about dementia but they don’t want to be overwhelmed with information this is a really neat opportunity for them to participate and they can just register through our website.”

You can register for the Talking About Dementia Event by clicking HERE.