Don't Let Loved Ones With Dementia Watch The News!

By: Jacqueline Marcell
Submitted: 2007-10-27 23:38:07
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By Jacqueline Marcell, Author, "Elder Rage"

I live in Southern California, so I have been obsessively watching the news about all the terrible fires we are having - showing on every channel. I am not in danger (yet), but the smoke is so thick I can't even open a window and am glad I haven't had to go anywhere.

I have been so worried about several friends who had to evacuate and I fell asleep with the television on, as I hoped to hear better news. Amazingly, my brain incorporated the news stories into the most complicated vivid dreams centering around my own home being threatened and engulfed in flames, as I struggled to gather important papers and get out. Finally, I awoke in a panic and then was so relieved to be safe in my home.

I marveled at the unbelievable ability of our minds to put such elaborate scenarios together. But then I got very sad, thinking about all the demented elders who were also watching the news and incorporating the horrors into their realities, but who wouldn't be able to wake up from it. I wanted to call all the television stations and beg them to announce that families shouldn't let their little children and their elders with dementia watch the news!

I know it's true, because it happened so many times with my elderly parents, both with early Alzheimer's (one type of dementia), when things they saw on television would get twisted into their reality. If Dad saw news coverage of a freeway accident with four cars, by the next day he was adamant it was fourteen cars and that someone he knew had been in it.

I remember one time after we watched a Clark Gable movie, they came home from Adult Day Care the next day beaming with pride saying that my father had gotten a part-time job taking care of Clark Gable's horses. It was so cute to see them so happy--and in the same little demented episode at the same time! I smiled and said, "Ohhh, wow, well, that's just wonderful Dad!" And then I had a really hard time holding my giggles when Mom piped up and added with glee, "Yes, honey, and we have to go shopping for hay right away!"

Unfortunately, I made the huge mistake of watching the horrors of 9/11 on television with my mother--and we cried together all week. By Saturday, as I made preparations for her 82nd birthday party the next day, she emphatically told me to stop because no one would be coming. When I asked her why in the world she thought that, she burst into tears and said, "Because everyone was killed in those tall buildings."

My heart shattered like glass that I had caused my sweet mother the pain of thinking that all her friends and family had been killed in the Twin Towers. I kicked myself for letting her watch it and was very careful about what she saw and heard after that.

So please, if you have a loved one with dementia, don't let them watch the news. Put on a beautiful romance or an uplifting comedy, so if they incorporate what they see into their distorted reality--it will only be love and laughter. And wouldn't you want someone to be so kind to do that for you?

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JACQUELINE MARCELL is a former television executive, whose caregiving experience resulted in her first (best-selling) book "Elder Rage", a Book-of-the-Month Club selection being considered for a film. Over fifty endorsements include: Hugh Downs, Regis Philbin, John Hopkins Memory Clinic and Duke University Center for Aging. Marcell also hosts a radio program called "Coping With Caregiving" (http://www.wsRadio.com/CopingWithCaregiving), and is an International speaker on Alzheimer's and eldercare awareness and reform. For more information see: www.ElderRage.com.

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