There were cuts and bruises on her mom’s body that Denise Bandel knew were not caused by yard work. Clearly, Bandel said, her now 90-year-old mom was having cognitive issues and she was falling more frequently and not telling anyone.
Bandel also had too many conversations with police about her mom — Martha Witt — wandering aimlessly in the neighborhood. “One day, she hit a car in a parking lot and she didn’t tell anybody,” Bandel said last week. “The police came to her door the next day and called me. I knew then something had to be done with mom.”
The clincher came when Bandel found her mom crying in the garage, shivering and covered in towels. “It became clear we needed to do something,” she said.
On the advice of her mom’s geriatrician, Bandel and her husband moved her mom from her home in Golden to an assisted living facility in Broomfield. The move came just a few months before the COVID-19 lockdown.
Her mom — who had lived in her Golden home for 35 years with her late husband — fought the move.
“She kept saying ‘Well, I suppose you want to put me away,’” Bandel said. “There was incredible guilt,” Bandel said. “I have shed so many tears over this woman. I didn’t want her last few years to be like this. But that is what Alzheimer’s does.”
More families are making heart-tugging decisions like the one faced by Bandel, say those who deal with Alzheimer’s disease in Colorado. The growth of Alzheimer’s — which attacks the cognitive abilities of people — prompted the Longmont CIty Council this month to proclaim June as Alzheimer’s disease awareness month.
As many as 6.5 million people in the United States are living with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia and those numbers are expected to grow to 13 million by 2050, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
Alzheimer’s is the seventh-leading cause of death of people in the U.S. and it kills more people than breast cancer and prostate cancer combined, the association states.
At least 76,000 Coloradans are living with Alzheimer’s and as many as 92,000 are projected to have the disease by 2025 — a 21.1% increase, according to the association.
Bandel is among 159,000 Coloradans serving as unpaid caregivers, providing an estimated 184 million hours of support in 2021 valued at more than $3.7 billion, the association states.
COVID-19 restrictions hit support services for Alzheimer’s patients, say officials, including in Longmont.
Before the pandemic, Longmont Senior Services had a Dementia-Friendly calendar of events. “... And we hope to revive that as more opportunities arise in the community again,” said Brandy Queen, acting manager of Senior Services.
The city still has a variety of services available to both people in Longmont who are living with dementia as well as services for their family caregivers, Queen said via email.
Those include:
- Individual or family consultations to discuss care needs
- Caregiver support groups
- Referrals for respite assistance, friendly visitors, home care, personal safety alerts, and other resources
- Lunch Bunch (a weekly social group for those with early to mid-stage dementia and their family caregivers)
- You Can Become a Savvy Caregiver (6-week training for family caregivers of people living with dementia)
- ·Classes about living with dementia and/or providing care for someone living with dementia, including many Alzheimer’s Association classes
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