Speaker 1
Good Saturday morning, everybody. Welcome to your next chapter. It’s all a production of Avery Heights Senior Living Community.

Speaker 1
Avery Heights is a 43-acre senior living community with a full continuum of care, including independent and assisted living, memory care, and a whole lot more. Now, this show will provide helpful hints and tips and resources for older adults that will empower as well as encourage you in your life’s journey. Now, topics related to physical and emotional health, financial health, senior living communities, and a whole lot more.

Speaker 1
Siobhan, good morning. Nice to see you.

Speaker 2
Good morning. Good to be here. How was your week? My week was really good.

Speaker 1
Yeah.

Speaker 2
Yeah, lots of fun. Like I said, I told you I’ve been working out a lot. Yeah.

Speaker 2
So I’m really excited about that. That’s nice. And I’m eating right now.

Speaker 1
Eating healthy and working out?

Speaker 2
Yes.

Speaker 1
Look at you.

Speaker 2
Yes. The Mediterranean diet.

Speaker 1
You know, I just had a… Last week, I love Mediterranean salads. Yeah.

Speaker 2
It’s good.

Speaker 1
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2
I love the greens. I love the greens. Yeah.

Speaker 1
Yeah. Talk about healthy. Last weekend, it was a long weekend.

Speaker 1
We had that Labor Day weekend. Yes. Some not so good weather on Labor Day.

Speaker 1
But nonetheless, we’re not working. I mean, you’re with family. That’s always a good thing.

Speaker 2
I did cheat a little bit, though. I went to brunch and I had eggs benedict. That is not on the Mediterranean diet.

Speaker 1
You knew what I was going to ask you. I was going to ask you. It’s hard on a holiday weekend.

Speaker 2
That is not on the Mediterranean diet.

Speaker 1
How do you go to a cookout and say, no, I’m not going to have any of that stuff you’re grilling?

Speaker 2
And then I had creme brulee for dessert. It wasn’t good.

Speaker 1
Yeah, but see, here’s how I look. If you’re good for all of the other days. Yes.

Speaker 1
Okay. I knew a person who was on a diet and on six days a week. they had one cheat day and it was like a Saturday almost every week. Smart.

Speaker 1
Right? And that’s when she’d go out for ice cream and popcorn and whatever.

Speaker 2
Yep.

Speaker 1
And really, it prevented her from cheating on the other six days. Exactly.

Speaker 2
And we went for a long walk afterwards too. We were down in the Middletown area, East Hampton. So we went for a long walk by the water and it was absolutely awesome.

Speaker 1
Speaking of walks. I know. There are, well, and this is timed perfectly because you wouldn’t want to have gone for a long walk just a couple of weeks ago when it was, you know, mid-90s with oppressive humidity.

Speaker 1
Right. You want to know what kills me? I’ll be driving home on days like that.

Speaker 1
It’ll be 95. I’ll leave the radio station. It’s like, you know, one in the afternoon.

Speaker 1
I’m driving home and I see somebody on the side of the road and they’re just jogging. And I’m like, you know. And threatened.

Speaker 1
Well, and here’s the thing. No, no, no. And I’m not, yeah, it’s like jog, go for it. There’s, before you go to work, or as most people, people like to sleep to the last possible second in the morning.

Speaker 1
But like at home, in the evening, you know, sunsets, you know, it’s a little earlier now, but I’m thinking to myself, it’s cooler. Why in the world are these people in full jog at two, at like noon?

Speaker 2
This is the time to walk though, to fall and fall and the spring. Because you got the nice weather in the morning and the nice weather in the afternoon. This is the best time because you’re not sweating. You’re not, you know.

Speaker 1
Couldn’t agree more. Perfect timing. Introduce our guests that we have this week.

Speaker 2
Our walking guests.

Speaker 1
They walked all the way here. That’s how much they like walking.

Speaker 2
So I’m glad to introduce Graham and Kristen from the Greater Hartford Alzheimer’s Walks. And they’re going to talk about the Alzheimer’s Association, which is near and dear to my heart. I was actually on the board of the Alzheimer’s Association a few years back.

Speaker 2
And we’ve got all sorts of fun stuff like the Brain Ball. And it’s a great organization. You know, I always tell everybody, anyone that has families, dementia, Alzheimer’s, and it’s so many people, they’ll say, are you connected with the Alzheimer’s Association?

Speaker 2
No. And I’m like, no. That’s your heart there. That’s your support. That’s what’s going to lift you up.

Speaker 2
That’s what’s going to get you through the tough days if you have a loved one that has that. So I’m really honored to have them here as my guest.

Speaker 1
Welcome.

Speaker 2
Thank you.

Speaker 3
Thank you very much.

Speaker 1
I did an Alzheimer’s walk about four years ago. Very nice. Of course, weather is everything.

Speaker 1
I think I would have chosen if it had rained that day. Because you have a whole bunch of them. I would have chosen another week.

Speaker 1
But the weather just cooperated very, very nicely. So welcome to the show. A lot of us are familiar with the Alzheimer’s Association.

Speaker 1
But for those who may not be, please tell us a little bit about it.

Speaker 4
Sure. Thank you so much for having us. We are so excited to be heading into walk season.

Speaker 4
walks in Alzheimer’s season. We have six across the state and this fall, and we’re just inviting everyone to come. And the Alzheimer’s Association are really our main goal is to be there for caregivers, to be there for people who are going through this disease, be there for people who are at risk for this disease. And what we do is we help the 80,000 people living in Connecticut with Alzheimer’s and their caregivers, many who are unpaid family members. And we help them with classes, support groups, care consultations where, hey, I have got this disease now in my family.

Speaker 4
What do I do? Call us and we can help guide you through the process.

Speaker 1
Are you talking to the individual who has dementia, who has Alzheimer’s? Are you talking with their families?

Speaker 4
All of the above.

Speaker 1
And when you speak with, who do you speak with first usually? Who’s usually the initial person to make contact?

Speaker 4
To make the call. It’s usually a caregiver. Yeah, I would imagine.

Speaker 4
But what’s great to know is as you go on and learn more about what you can do, you realize that we have these great things called early stage engagement activities. So people in the early stages of the disease can do music bingo. And we have choirs and we have museum programs and things for people to stay activated and connected because that’s so crucial once you get a diagnosis.

Speaker 1
It is an insidious disease, really. And it’s slow from the experience that I’ve had with it, where the onsites of dementia and eventually getting to the stage of Alzheimer’s. Because people, they seem to use dementia and Alzheimer’s kind of interchangeably when, in fact, they’re very different. But when you get to the latter stages, I mean, it’s a slow process, at least by what I’ve witnessed, where you see the decline in memory and where it goes from, you know, simple functions that you do on a routine basis where you, you know, where you become forgetful more and more and more often. But talk about the different stages or, I don’t know, levels maybe? Would that be a better term?

Speaker 4
I think maybe just to start off, to explain the difference between dementia and Alzheimer’s. There you go. Right, because I think that that’s really confusing to some people. And dementia is actually the umbrella term of symptoms that you experience when you have this disease.

Speaker 4
So the confusion, the behavior because you’re frustrated, the repeating of stories, the getting lost, coming home from somewhere. That’s what dementia is. Alzheimer’s is actually the biological disease and the changes in your brain that causes the symptoms.

Speaker 4
So there are different things that cause those symptoms of dementia. Alzheimer’s is one. That’s the most common type.

Speaker 4
There’s Lewy body dementia, which my mom had some familiar with that. There is vascular dementia, which may happen after a brain stroke or a TIA. There is frontotemporal.

Speaker 4
There’s mixed dementia. So there’s different types of biological changes in the brain that cause those symptoms of dementia. We use those terms interchangeably, and we’re the Alzheimer’s Association, but we deal with all the different types of dementia.

Speaker 1
Do we know yet what specifically causes it? Is it genetic? If families have history of it, are you more apt?

Speaker 1
Are you more prone if someone in your family has had it? Or is it environmental? Is it biological?

Speaker 1
Is it, do we know any of that?

Speaker 4
Yeah, we know a lot of stuff. Good, good. Age is the greatest risk factor, right?

Speaker 4
So unfortunately, most of the folks who are diagnosed are diagnosed over the age of 65, But more people are diagnosed now in their 30s and 40s and 50s even. It’s really a younger onset situation sometimes. There are other risk factors in addition to that.

Speaker 4
There’s a small genetic risk factor. And if your loved one, your mother or your father or your sibling has the disease, you are at a greater risk of getting the disease. It doesn’t mean you’re going to get it.

Speaker 4
There’s environmental factors. There’s a race situation where black African Americans are two times as likely to develop Alzheimer’s and Latino Hispanics are one and a half times. What we do know is that sometimes people come forth with already some of those issues like the risk factors like the heart issues or the diabetes or blood sugar concerns.

Speaker 4
So there are lots of things. We are looking into doing more research and more inclusive research, including people in research trials is so critical and really what we’re focusing on. Because this isn’t just a disease for white people.

Speaker 4
This is a disease for everyone, unfortunately.

Speaker 1
What kind of – and as I’m listening to you, what kind of strides have we made in combating?

Speaker 4
Well, we do have a new drug that was approved by the FDA last year, albeit involved in some controversy. But it is a drug that actually attacks the amyloid plaques, which is one of the biomarkers in your brain, and gets rid of it to give families more time. There are. The good news about that is that that’s the first generation and there are four more that are scheduled to come before the FDA in the next 18 months.

Speaker 4
So there are other generations of drugs that could actually disease modify. We’ve never had a disease modifying drugs. The drugs that we have deal with symptoms only.

Speaker 4
Now we also are looking at, and haven’t talked about this in a while, brain health, lifestyle interventions like you guys were talking about, the Mediterranean diet, walking, making sure. There are 10 ways to love your brain. Making sure that your head is protected when you’re biking.

Speaker 4
Getting enough sleep. The gut-brain connection. There’s just so much.

Speaker 4
Yeah, I saw your face. Getting enough sleep. That is a challenge.

Speaker 4
I’m guilty. But when you get that sleep, make sure that it’s good sleep. Because when you sleep, you can actually have the toxins washed from your brain.

Speaker 4
So there’s a lot of great research out there about things we can do now to reduce our risk later.

Speaker 2
And medications too, right? Like if you take something for like if you have a stomach diarrhea or something, those medications that kind of dry out the brain? Does that do it to like antihistamines? I went to a seminar one time and they mentioned that.

Speaker 4
I know there’s a lot of talk about the gut-brain connection and a lot of talk about actually sleep aids, right? So probably not so good if you take a lot of those sleep aids. They’re not good for your brain. You know, you’re making faces like the sleep issue is a big deal for morning DJs.

Speaker 1
Oh, geez. You knew a time I went to bed and got up regularly. I mean, if you did this once every now and then, You’d be like, well, we all have had nights or mornings like that.

Speaker 1
But five days a week when you go to bed at 1130 and get up at 4, 415, you know. Weekends are a little different. But I know.

Speaker 1
I’m listening to you and I’m like, oh, ouch.

Speaker 4
Well, there’s a lot of things we could do now. And that’s what’s really important is it’s never too late to start these things. It’s never too late to start doing things to reduce your risk later.

Speaker 1
When did this become a thing? For me, I remember hearing the word Alzheimer’s in the late 80s. And it was really, it was surrounding Reagan. Prior to that, it was, oh, don’t listen to him.

Speaker 1
He’s going senile, which is a word I never hear anymore. It was, ah, they’re just going senile. Well, now it’s just, when did all this occur?

Speaker 1
I’m sure it predates my memory.

Speaker 4
I want to say probably 30 years ago, but I think 30 years ago is probably 50 years ago.

Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s already 35 years since Reagan.

Speaker 4
Alzheimer’s was discovered in the early 1900s, to be honest with you. Yeah, yeah. But people thought that it was just a part of normal aging, which is a big myth.

Speaker 4
It is not. Not everyone has to get this disease. Not everyone gets this disease.

Speaker 4
It’s not, oh, grandma’s just senile. Put her in the back of the room there. Right.

Speaker 4
We’ll give her some food and some TV. That’s not how it works. There are 101-year-olds who are incredibly sharp.

Speaker 4
So it’s not that everyone has this disease. And the good thing about it is when you learn and you know what these early signs are, i.e. come to a 10 signs class that we teach and you can learn what they are, then you know when it’s time to take your memory concerns to a doctor.

Speaker 1
Yeah, because we’ve talked about this many a time, Siobhan, where you have somebody 100 and 102 years old and they’re sharp as a tack. You know, they had somebody with a Louis body like Robin Williams. Right.

Speaker 1
Didn’t he? He had that. And he wasn’t. Was late 60s, I think, is what he was.

Speaker 1
What he was at the time. um what are some things that we as caregivers or as the the children of some of these individuals with um alzheimer’s what can we be on the lookout for are there telltale signs where oh where maybe one thing in and of itself ah brain fog what happening but if it’s over and over if it’s consistent what should we be looking out for maybe taking note of

Speaker 4
Yeah, I think one of the things to look out for is the short-term memory issues. So if you’re like, we had breakfast already, Mom. Oh, no, I’m hungry again.

Speaker 4
I want to have breakfast. So it tends to happen in this disease that the short-term memory goes away and the longer-term memories remain. So maybe some short-term memory issues, like they forgot that they recently went somewhere.

Speaker 4
Like I said, forgetting how to come home from a familiar place, you know, that’s a concern. You know, having those visual spatial issues, you know, with my mom, for example, she was she was Nick in the car because she was having a hard time getting into the into the garage. Right.

Speaker 4
So like having some visual and hitting the curbs, that kind of thing. So having some visual spatial issues. There are a lot of signs, but it’s more about like looking at them as a whole.

Speaker 4
If you have your keys in your hand, all right, losing your keys, that doesn’t mean that you have Alzheimer’s.

Speaker 1
I hope not, because I know some people lose their keys on a daily basis. Right.

Speaker 4
But having the keys in your hand and not knowing what they do. Right. Or being in your car and not knowing that R is reverse and D is drive, right?

Speaker 4
So things like that. So think about these things. I would say as a caregiver or someone concerned, go to one of those classes or you can look up online, alz.org slash ct.

Speaker 4
Look up what the 10 signs are. Call our helpline. If I could just throw that in, 800-272-3900.

Speaker 4
It’s our 800 helpline that anyone can call at any time with any questions about dementia. It’s free.

Speaker 1
I’m glad to hear that. Well, we want to mention that as often as we can throughout this show. You know what really got me when you said it’s not a matter of where did I put my keys or where did I put my glasses or where did I put – because we all say that, and that doesn’t mean we’ve got any form of dementia.

Speaker 1
But why – what do these do? Or what does that army – yeah, that really hits. Tell us about the services that you guys offer.

Speaker 4
So we do have those education classes, which are free, and they are most of them online. We pivoted during COVID. We went online like everybody else, and we were actually able to serve more people, which was quite amazing because instead of having to drive somewhere, you could just pop into the next room and go on Zoom.

Speaker 4
So we have education classes on everything from what are the 10 signs to effective communications, how to speak to someone who has this disease. One of the big myths I like to say is you cannot make them come into your reality anymore. You have to go into theirs.

Speaker 4
You have to meet them where they are, which is just such a key thing to being able to speak to somebody and never arguing, right? So those kinds of things. We have care consultations, like I mentioned.

Speaker 4
When you get diagnosed, you can call us and we can sit down with you and help guide you through the process. We have support groups for adults, for children, for those living with the disease. It’s really important to know you’re not alone.

Speaker 4
So talking to other people, just getting their advice, that kind of thing. and then you know we have a lot of different things that we do which we need to raise money for and that’s why you know we have these big events like our walks and we are very excited about our walks

Speaker 1
tell me about these walks because i’m looking at them and looks like you’ve got oh my goodness a half a dozen or so um and they all they begin very shortly on saturday september 24th and they really kind of run through mid-October. So what’s its purpose? How much money are you expected to raise? And where does that money go? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you again very much for the

Speaker 3
opportunity to be here. So the Walk to End Alzheimer’s events themselves are our largest fundraising platform. There’s over 600 throughout the nation. As you mentioned there, we have six in the state of Connecticut beginning in September. Our first mega weekend is on the 24th where we We have two walks in one day and then one on the Sunday as well.

Speaker 3
And then they proceed through. The last event is on October 16th at Rentschler Field. Walks themselves are opportunities for folks.

Speaker 3
A lot of time it’s their first touch point to the Alzheimer’s Association and what we do. It’s where we gather folks of all ages to come together, celebrate, remember their loved ones, and find out additional information about the Alzheimer’s Association.

Speaker 1
How long are the walks?

Speaker 3
They vary in length. anywhere from 1.5 to 3 miles, depending on the site and location and how much space we have in the communities to utilize. How many people do you usually get at these?

Speaker 3
Hundreds. Hundreds to thousands is always our expectation. Wow. Really? That many?

Speaker 3
There’s a humongous need for what we do, and our fundraisers are incredibly dedicated and loyal, and they realize that without these critical funds, we can’t do what we do and keep our programs and services free for caregivers and loved ones.

Speaker 1
All right. So explain to me how this works. Walk me through this.

Speaker 1
So I’m going to go and walk on one of these days. Yeah. Do I just fill out a form and pay an entry fee or do I get sponsors to sponsor me or how does this?

Speaker 1
Sure.

Speaker 3
Yeah. Well, we keep it real simple, frankly. We do have a website.

Speaker 3
I like that. Yeah. We have a website, a fundraising platform where we encourage folks to register themselves.

Speaker 3
They sign up and give some information related to their address and T-shirt size. we also encourage folks to form a team so team yeah so we’d have a team here at the station right and all you and your co-workers can join the team and then fundraise could either using that platform teams uh you don’t have to be on a team you can sign up as a participant as well there’s no fee to register although we do encourage fundraising to receive the t-shirts for the walks we have a minimum fundraising expectation of a hundred dollars oh that’s not too bad it’s not too bad at all. And most teams far surpass that goal. The money that is generated, number one,

Speaker 1
where does it go? Does it stay here within state or do you ship it off to the national headquarters?

Speaker 3
So we are a national organization. Our office is located in Chicago, although the programs and services that we raise this money for helps folks right here in Connecticut. Okay. Generally speaking,

Speaker 1
How much have you been able to raise through these walks? Nationally? No, let’s say right here, these six in Connecticut in years past.

Speaker 3
Last year we raised over $1.34 million. Now we’re cooking with gas here.

Speaker 1
Yes, this is what I wanted to eat. This is why I said it more for the state of Connecticut. This is fantastic. Good for you guys. I’m proud of the work that you’re doing.

Speaker 3
That number, too, I should make mention. That’s made up of our walks, our peer-to-peer fundraising events, But then we are also sponsored by some great organizations, both locally and larger corporations throughout the state of Connecticut as well.

Speaker 1
Folks, you are listening to your next chapter, a production of Avery Heights Senior Living Community. Siobhan is here. I know.

Speaker 2
And Avery Heights will be walking. Yay! All right!

Speaker 3
Avery Heights is also a sponsor of the Hartford event.

Speaker 1
Graham Cobbs, manager of the Greater Hartford Walk and Alzheimer’s. Also, Christian Casado, director of communications for Alzheimer’s Association. um there’s a i gotta be a tremendous amount of research involved in in all of this and it’s it’s just like it’s like probably peeling back layers and layers of an onion um tell us about that

Speaker 4
so very exciting i just came back from a huge research conference in san diego i’m also a research champion which doesn’t mean that i’m a researcher or a doctor i’m not even worthy to be I just learned about the research and I can share it with you guys. So, you know, we are funding at present, the Alzheimer’s Association is funding $2 million in research right here in Connecticut.

Speaker 2
Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 4
And people are really looking at interesting things. You think it’s all drug development, but it’s not at all. We are looking at, for example, at UConn Health, we are looking at a gentleman who’s looking at the difference between and the connection between depression and dementia.

Speaker 4
There is somebody at Yale who’s looking at the very unique types of Alzheimer’s, unique types of dementia presented with language issues or visual issues. There’s also someone at Yale who is now looking at alcohol misuse and dementia. There is a lot of great research happening right here in the state.

Speaker 4
And it’s very exciting with these younger researchers and out-of-the-box research. If you wanted to get involved in research and check it out, go to TrialMatch. match on our website is a way you can get involved in clinical trials and you find out what’s near you. You can be involved even as someone who’s a caregiver or someone who doesn’t have the disease.

Speaker 4
And it can be something as simple as filling out some questions and they’ll watch your cognitive changes to hopping on a treadmill to, you know, a drug development, drug testing. So there is so much research going on. And now, like I was saying, the lifestyle research, that’s really hot right

Speaker 2
now. I think that’s the saddest one is when we see folks at the community that it’s substance abuse that may have brought on their Alzheimer’s or dementia. It’s so sad to know that you might have caused this on yourself. And I think in some ways some people say it’s the most agitated where we’ve had people just walking and walking and walking and just can’t relax. What about the

Speaker 1
flowers and the ceremony and all of that that occur at these walks? I want to go back and talk about these walks one more time before we wrap

Speaker 3
things up here. No, I can talk about walk all day long. It’s an amazing event.

Speaker 3
The flowers themselves are a very special portion, and I would say far more important than the distance that we walk. It’s our Promise Garden ceremony, which takes place at the beginning of the day, and then our walks begin immediately after that. But our Promise Garden ceremonies are where we bring folks up on stage.

Speaker 3
As you arrive to the walk, you can stop at the check-in tent to turn in any additional donations that you have, although we do encourage folks to raise money online by using either our mobile app or directly through the website. But once you checked in, you can head right to the Promise Garden tent, we call it, and you can pick up a flower of your choice. There are four different colors that represent four different associations and connections to the disease.

Speaker 3
The flowers themselves are large pinwheels. So if you can grab a visual kind of of what I’m saying here through the radio, it’s an amazing visual scene when everyone holds up the flowers together in the wind. But there’s four different colors.

Speaker 3
We have blue, yellow, orange, and purple.

Speaker 2
I would hope purple.

Speaker 3
That’s the first color that comes to my mind. Yeah, and I’m going to actually, Kristen, you want to go into a little bit deeper detail on those colors?

Speaker 4
Just real quick. Blue is if you have the disease. Yellow is if you’re a caregiver.

Speaker 4
Orange is if you are a supporter. And purple is if you’ve lost someone. Gotcha.

Speaker 4
And the white one, real quick.

Speaker 3
Yeah, and the white is really a moving part of the ceremony. That’s the last flower to be announced, and that will represent our first survivor, of which we’ve yet to find.

Speaker 1
Folks, these walks are coming up in eastern Connecticut on Saturday, September 24th, and western Connecticut also on Saturday, September 24th. Yeah, two going on at the same day. It’s going to be hard.

Speaker 3
Yeah, that’s our mega weekend. So two on the same day and then one the following in New Haven.

Speaker 1
That’s right, the following day in New Haven on Sunday, the 25th of September. Then we head into October through central Connecticut Sunday, October 2nd, Sunday, October 9th in Fairfield County, And then on Sunday, October 16th in Greater Hartford, really quick, take me in one minute or less. Take me through what a typical day is. What can somebody expect on walk day?

Speaker 3
So right upon arrival, you’ll be greeted by volunteers within the organization that can kind of escort you to the site itself. Once you’re in the area, all the events have DJs. So it’s a fun, festive environment. Several of our events have kid zones that are specifically to keep the children entertained during the walk. It’s not a long experience.

Speaker 1
Are they city streets or is it around a track? It’s a variety of both.

Speaker 3
Depending on where the sites are located at Rensselaer Field, we utilize the long walking area around and actually go through the stadium as well. Very nice. And then we have the Promise Garden ceremony. Like I said, there’s a DJ. Folks of all ages attend and then begin the walk.

Speaker 1
I heard the word volunteer a minute ago. Is this something that you’re always looking for? And how does one get in touch to volunteer?

Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely. So we can’t do what we do as an organization without our amazing volunteers. And as far as staff partners goes, there’s not too many of us in Connecticut. So we have an army of volunteers, though, that volunteer in all aspects, whether it’s our programs and caregivers or at walks themselves.

Speaker 1
Yeah, because I’m thinking to myself, well, what can we do? How can we help? What can we do to help the Alzheimer’s Association?

Speaker 3
Call me, and I’ll get you in touch. It’s as simple as that. It’s as simple as that.

Speaker 2
DM you, right?

Speaker 3
Yeah, absolutely. No, the number one step is first just, you know, we can cater to whatever time you have. We will work with your schedule. And it’s very important to me that everyone that volunteers has an impactful and really relevant feeling from the day.

Speaker 1
Kristen, talk about that helpline once again and why it’s so key.

Speaker 4
Absolutely. 800-272-3900, 24-hour helpline with trained social workers on the other end. You can ask any question about dementia.

Speaker 4
You can say, hey, I need a doctor in Bloomfield. Or, hey, my mother is at the door. It’s 2 a.m. with her bags packed, wanting to go home, and she’s home.

Speaker 4
How do I talk her down from this? How do I reduce the agitation? So that 800 number is key.

Speaker 4
I just encourage everyone to use it. Again, you are not alone.

Speaker 1
I want to thank our guest, Kristen Casado, Director of Communications for Alzheimer’s as well. I appreciate the work that you do as well. Graham Cobbs, Manager of the Greater Hartford Walk to end Alzheimer’s. Of course, folks, you’ve been listening to the latest edition of your next chapter, Senior Living with Avery Heights.

Speaker 1
Please be sure to join one of these walks that I just mentioned. If you are able to, again, for more information on the Connecticut Alzheimer’s Walk 2022, go to alz.org forward slash ct. Or again, that helpline, 800-272-3900.

Speaker 1
For Siobhan Mattingly, I’m Gary Byron. Thank you so much for listening. Until next Saturday, have a good one, everybody.

Speaker 1
So long.