ORILLIA - Before her late mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, Nikki Holmes began to notice “little personality changes.”
“At first you think it’s dementia or she’s getting old,” Holmes said, noting the short-term memory loss that emerged as an early sign.
A visit to her parents’ home would find her father taking over household jobs traditionally overseen by his wife of many years– most notably the laundry and fixing dinner.   
Inexplicably, she was withdrawing from the tasks that had long been her domain.
“He just started slowly picking up the slack without realizing it,”  Holmes said.
An Alzheimer’s diagnosis came in July 2007.
“You have that shock, but then you have that ‘ah-ha’ moment,” she recalled of the news and the host of questions it raised for the family.  
“How is that going to affect mom? How is that going to affect dad? How is that going to affect us?”
They would turn to the Alzheimer Society of North East Simcoe County, a local agency that provides support to patients and their families.
Holmes was able to pass along to her father the information she’d learned about the disease and the challenges that were to come, “so that he could start taking it in.”
Attending a support group helped her prepare for the changes as well, with other caregivers providing insights into the progression of dementia.
She and her husband would eventually invite her mother and father to live with them at their Orillia home.
“For us, this is what felt right,” she said. “My parents treated me well. It was an opportunity for us to treat them well.”
On many nights Holmes’s father was woken dozens of times by his wife, who insisted a trip to the washroom was necessary, yet made no move to get there herself.
During the day she had a tendency to wander from the home.
Though not all people with dementia experience the same behaviours, all require constant care giving in later stages.
As the disease progressed and her care became ever more exhausting for her husband, she was placed in a local long-term care home.
“I couldn’t lose both my parents, and I think dad was getting close,” Holmes added.
As difficult as the family’s journey with Alzheimer’s would prove, they would come to “embrace” it with proper support and knowledge about the disease.
“You cannot survive it well without that help, and I think we survived it very well,” Holmes added.
Public health officials are bracing for a surge in dementia, including Alzheimer’s Disease, over the next 30 years, with the economic burden related to these conditions expected to more than double to $37 billion by 2018.
That figure is anticipated to reach $153 billion by 2038, according to the recently released report, “Rising Tide – The Impact of Dementia on Canadian Society.”
Leila Sherriff, executive director of the Alzheimer Society’s local chapter, likened the coming wave to the hurricane that struck New Orleans.
“Unless we build the dykes and are ready, there will be a huge impact on people in our communities and the associated healthcare costs,” she said.
Among the measures recommended to address the coming wave of new cases is the need for a national dementia strategy with “accelerated” investments in research.
Greater support for caregivers and strategies to prevent and manage chronic disease are also recommended.
Locally, cases of dementia in North Simcoe/Muskoka are projected to exceed 8,000 by 2016, representing an increase of nearly 36 per cent since 2008.
“We actually had been aware that many more people were being diagnosed recently,” Sherriff added. “As baby boomers were aging, we were anticipating the numbers would be growing at a large rate. But with the numbers released in this report, we were shocked at the number of people that will be affected, the impact it will have on so many people’s lives and the cumulative effect on the health care system.”
For more information go to www.alzheimerorillia.com.