Aid for Alzheimer’s

As friends for almost 40 years, the thought of ending up at an Alzheimer’s support group together was the last thing on the minds of Barbara Crane and Sydie Allen.

But that heartbreaking journey began for both of them around 2003 and 2004.

“They [our husbands] both got dementia/Alzheimer’s about the same time, so Barbara and I kind of started our [journey],” Allen said.

Crane and Allen met through their husbands, Ted Crane and Tommy Allen, who both worked in the paper industry and got to know each other through football games, conventions and eventually moving back to Birmingham in the ’90s.

But neither Crane nor Allen knew how to handle their husbands’ diagnoses, and acceptance came slowly, Allen said. 

“What you have to understand about it is once you get that diagnosis, it takes a while for you to accept it, I guess,” she said. “Because they’re still pretty functional. When you finally start recognizing it [the symptoms], then you do something about it.”

Allen and Crane found a day care for their husbands, where Tommy and Ted could be active and receive socialization and stimulation. Through that day care program, they learned about Alzheimer’s of Central Alabama and the organization’s care group.

“We started going to the care-group meeting, which was a very hard step to do,” Allen said. “If I remember, the first time we went, we both came out scared to death. But we could go in together.”

“And that made it easy,” Crane added. “Everything was easier, because we had somebody to be with us.”

ACA is an organization based in Mountain Brook that aims to help families afford necessities such as continence supplies and respite care. The organization also serves as an educational resource for families. “We are trying to provide services that help families keep a loved one at home,” said ACA Executive Director Miller Piggott. 

Their care group brought together caregivers from many stages in the disease, which provided advice and a look at what the future held. 

Crane and Allen said they would hear stories and think their husbands would never reach that point of the disease or if they did, it would be too much to handle. 

“If you go to a meeting such as Miller’s support group, it enables you to transition from that denial to acceptance,” Crane said.

“And from acceptance to learning about the disease and learning what to do,” Allen said.

One of ACA’s core values is helping local families, Piggott said. Because ACA is a local organization, they remain in charge of decisions and are able to support research grants in Alabama and provide information to families in the area. They have funded 23 grants at Alabama universities, and while they recognize the importance of research, Piggott said they do not want to lose sight of families who need help today.

“Bottom line is although research gives hope for the future, we’re trying to help families who are suffering today,” she said. “There’s a current generation of patients that research is not going to help, and they need services today.” 

One of ACA’s goals is developing day care programs with other local organizations.

“What we’re trying to do is work with the day cares to provide art, music, partnering with Hand in Paw for pet therapy, bringing people in to help with exercise to elevate the quality of the programming in all of the adult day cares to help make the quality of care in the industry better,” Piggott said.

About 10 years after he was diagnosed, Ted Crane died in February 2014. Crane said although she does not attend the support groups with Allen anymore, she continues to stay involved with ACA because she supports the organization’s message.

Crane is working with her church, Canterbury United Methodist, to create a respite ministry for early-diagnosed dementia patients. The program is set to open June 7.

“It’s really twofold,” she said. “It’s there for the patient or the person that has dementia, and it gives them some stimulation, some socialization. … The second part of it, it gives the caregiver the opportunity to have some time [to themselves] two days a week, four hours a day.”

Piggott and other individuals involved with ACA have helped in developing the program, and Crane said more programs or care groups will be needed in the future.

“We’re in such an aging society right now,” she said. “We’re going to have to have more and more support group meetings, we’re going to have to have more and more respite programs. It is staggering what is happening in this country.”