Video: Dealing With Alzheimer’s

MONROE COUNTY, MISS. (WCBI)- Legendary University of Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt has died.

She passed away after being diagnosed with early onset dementia in the form of Alzheimer’s in 2011.

People battling alzheirmer’s is something we’re starting to hear more and more about, and one reason for that is because people are being diagnosed at an early age.

“You think about the disease but that’s just the tip of it,” said Mary Dorris, founder of First Friends Respite Center. “The behaviors that come are so hard to deal with.”

Mary Dorris is very familiar with seeing people who are battling Alzheimer’s.

For eight years, she watched and helped her husband fight with the illness.

“It was an adventure, it was the worst thing I’ve ever been through and I’ve also been through cancer,” she said.

Dorris educated herself to better take care of her husband.

“You have to learn what to say and what not to say, not to argue with them, not to take a different approach from anything,” said Dorris. “You are entering their world because they cannot come into yours.”

She also had to understand the behavioral patterns and the symptoms.

“Dementia is not a disease,” she said. “Dementia is a symptom or the symptoms of several different diseases and Alzheimer’s is one of the diseases.”

Many people living with Alzheimer’s won’t even know.

“At one point we had to cover all of the mirrors in our place because we had one lady who was scared every time she looked in the mirror,” said Dorris. “She thought someone was coming after her and it was her own reflection in the mirror.”

Dorris calls the disease one of the saddest illnesses impacting people, recalling the death of coaching legend Pat Summit.

“She was still in her prime when she had to be taken away,” said Dorris. “She was forgetting her plays, and I don’t know that for sure but she was in a good physical state but her mental health stopped her from doing her job.”>

Dorris said Alzheimer’s can be sad but yet loving.

If anyone knows or has a loved one battling with the disease and needs a helping hand, more information can be found on www.firstfriendsamory.com