Vijayalakshmi Srinivasan, 81, wears her sweetest smile. She greets you with a friendly disposition and is very affable. She connects with strangers immediately and is quick to pick up on the mood of all those around her.
Srinivasan has Alzheimer’s disease - the most common type of dementia. It is a progressive disease which initially begins with memory loss leading to loss of ability to carry on a conversation and respond to the environment.
Shoba Dakshinamurthy 54, Srinivasan’s daughter is by her side. She is extremely patient and kind to her mother. She patiently listens to her mother’s constant interruptions when she is in conversation with other people.
Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/uae/health/living-with-alzheimers-how-patients-families-in-uae-cope-1.96559506
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Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
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#UAEnews #health #alzheimersawareness
Srinivasan has Alzheimer’s disease - the most common type of dementia. It is a progressive disease which initially begins with memory loss leading to loss of ability to carry on a conversation and respond to the environment.
Shoba Dakshinamurthy 54, Srinivasan’s daughter is by her side. She is extremely patient and kind to her mother. She patiently listens to her mother’s constant interruptions when she is in conversation with other people.
Read the full story here: https://gulfnews.com/uae/health/living-with-alzheimers-how-patients-families-in-uae-cope-1.96559506
See more videos at https://gulfnews.com/videos
Read more Gulf News stories here: https://bit.ly/2HLJ2km
Subscribe to Gulf News on YouTube and watch more of our videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/GulfNewsTV
#UAEnews #health #alzheimersawareness
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NewsTranscript
00:00My father had Alzheimer's. Unfortunately, he passed away two years ago and three months
00:07after it was my mom. She was the caregiver of my dad. His inspiration behind Forget Me Not.
00:18We are a social enterprise raising awareness on Alzheimer's disease and promoting quality
00:24of life for seniors and also now caregivers here in the UAE since 2013.
00:30My father had Alzheimer's. Unfortunately, he passed away two years ago and three months
00:37after it was my mom. She was the caregiver of my dad. His inspiration behind Forget Me Not.
00:46And now the second inspiration is my father-in-law because he has Parkinson's plus Alzheimer's.
00:52My dad is actually part of this group. That's how he really likes to be around people. So his talent
00:59is basically singing. So he loves to be around people to bring joy to music. So that's how he
01:04entered the group and he's been with Alzheimer's organization for five years. Right now we're like
01:10almost over a hundred senior expats or above 60 and there's actually more outside Dubai.
01:16So they are my second plan. We provide social support as to not only Alzheimer patients
01:23but seniors who are six years old and above. Lots of cognitive activities. We do a lot of trips.
01:30We do a lot of artistic initiatives like painting pizza. We bake pizza. We do cupcakes.
01:38We've done almost everything you know to keep them very engaged. My dad suffers from
01:44vascular dementia. It wasn't easy. Initially it's very hard to diagnose because he was still
01:50fully functional and he wouldn't heal. He was forgetting things but we all are honestly. So
01:56initially you think it's a part of just getting older. It took a couple of years before somebody
02:02finally diagnosed him with it and in the meantime his memory and his general cognitive function
02:11started getting worse. They've been amazing because they've been extremely helpful in
02:15finding social events for him to go. Obviously he's not from here. We're Italian and he never
02:22so he doesn't have a lot of connections here. Forget Me Not became like a second family.
02:28Something he was looking up to attending the events. I actually went to two of them with him.
02:36One of them we did painting and he he loved it because I mean neither of us are artists
02:44so our final piece was pretty bad but he came home and he was making jokes and you know.
02:53It's been a very very hectic time for my mom the past 10 years. To see my mother
02:59deteriorating from dementia at the end was very very difficult on us. One day I met
03:08Mrs Shiraz who is a friend of us and part of the Forget Me Not association and so I met Shiraz and
03:18then one day I met also her friend Samir. Mr Samir Amun is a friend of us. He's from Lebanon also
03:26and we became friends and then so with Shiraz and with my mother with Samir and with Samir's help
03:33we started also giving joy to this group. The small group but then Samir one day introduced
03:40me and my mom to the Forget Me Not group which is amazing. I was very impressed when I went the
03:47first time for the first event and then from there on we went to another event and I got all the time
03:55connected with the group. We realized that she's suffering from Alzheimer's
04:01around 2019-20. To be specific I think 2020. That's when we really realized that she's
04:07suffering from that. We were not ready to accept it initially but then we had taken her to the
04:13doctor and then got her examined and they did some tests you know and then they confirmed.
04:19That's how we got to know about this. It's not that difficult to deal with it because she's
04:24in general she's a very happy person, very positive person so it's not that
04:28difficult to deal with it. You all are very good people.