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Alzheimer's Helpers Q. Please give us a “good news” column, something to make us feel good as we move into a challenging new year.A. We begin with a heartening fact that is too little known: deep within the muddled, deteriorating mind of the Alzheimer’s sufferer there resides a small piece of that person who was. The key to achieving ‘the connection’ is: love. Bill Fay knows this; indeed, he teaches the fact as though it was gospel. For 10 years, he watched as his wife, Katherine, mother to their four sons, slowly slipped away from all of them. She died in a nursing home. Cause of this death too soon: Alzheimer’s disease. “As caregivers, we hold a powerful tool,” Fay begins. “Show the patient love; show the Alzheimer’s person patience. These people recognize love.” “Love,” he continues, “can mean simply holding a hand, or fingers. Hold the hand firmly, even if your person is comatose. Many of those in nursing homes today crave a human touch,” he told me, adding: “It is such a simple act, yet so very powerful.” Are these merely pretty words from a speechmaker? Or, is Fay just another well-spoken proselytizer: some hit-and-run artist who wouldn’t know a nursing home from a Motel 6? You be the judge. William (Bill) Fay, 77, retired Kodak salesman from Rochester, NY, is the founder and prime mover behind Alzheimer’s Helpers, a small yet significant non-profit support group active in Central Florida. Bill’s second wife, Anna Marie (nee Pavlik) Fay, is treasurer and second-in-command. The helpers number 14. A realist, and modest to a fault, Bill Fay says, “We’re just a Mom and Pop operation. We do one mailing a year asking for money, and our entire budget is somewhere around $10,000 a year but right now we have $25,000 in the treasury.” Like a band of wandering Samaritans, the Helpers go where they’re invited, and do whatever is needed. “Our mission is to raise the quality of life for unfortunate senior women and men,” Fay explains. “The nursing home should be a place to go and live…not a place to go and die!” Bill Fay next produced a partial list of accomplishments for his six-year-old band of helpers:
No one takes a salary and expenses are out-of-pocket. Bill Fay’s remuneration comes from results, in seeing a grossly overweight woman who had spent eight years bound to her bed, suddenly able to move about (“To see blue sky, to again hear birds sing.”) in a sturdy (and expensive) rolling chair, courtesy of Alzheimer’s Helpers, Inc. Then, he remembers his satisfaction “in seeing a patient stop yelling and screaming just because one of our group placed a baby-doll in the woman’s arms…and I’ve witnessed residents who supposedly were incapable of walking get up out of a wheelchair and do a little dance when our musicians performed…” What’s ahead for the Helpers? What is his next dream? Bill Fay didn’t hesitate: “If people in other communities, such as ours here in Tavares, Florida, started up groups like our Helpers, that would fulfill a long-held dream. I call nursing home residents, ‘Our out of sight elders.’ “If you can’t help, or send a check,” he said finally, “you can still serve by saying a prayer. The residents need our spiritual help, too.” (To contact or contribute: Alzheimer’s Helpers, Inc., 871 Vindale Rd.) |
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