Video: Dementia Tour Comes to Starkville

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STARKVILLE, Miss. (WCBI) – Alzheimer’s is the second most feared diseased after cancer in the United States. For national Alzheimer’s awareness month, the Community Counseling Services are touring northern Mississippi to educate people.

It’s a way of life for many of us as we get older. Blurred vision, impaired hearing, and loss of sensitivity. The Dementia Trailer Tour in Starkville lets us step into the shoes of someone with Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

“What this does is it teaches us how to work with our elderly community and how to respect, you know, what they’re experiencing, how what their signs and symptoms are. How to identify it. So it’s a valuable experience,” said Martha Aleen Wooten from the Community Counseling Services.

Being stripped of your vital senses can leave a lasting impression. The entire exercise only takes ten minutes.

“What we do is we impair an individual from the feet all the way up to the head. We ask them to put on latex gloves with corn in the fingers, symbolizes having arthritis or loss of strength and coordination. We wear head phones on their ears playing static, train whistles, all different sounds to throw them off their course. We also put goggles on them with a yellow lens and a black dot that represents how our vision yellows as we age,” added Mrs. Wooten.

It’s a disease that affects the elderly every day. The experience made it difficult to see for participates, in complete darkness inside the trailer with only a strobe light.

“It was very frustrating. You don’t feel like you normally feel if you know how to do normal tasks. There was some great impairment in completing the task. Some slight discomfort,” said Phashun King, Day Treatment Assistant.

The organization hopes to continue spreading awareness about the hereditary disease that is affecting millions of families around the country.

There will be a Dementia Trailer Tour stopping at six other locations around northern Mississippi up until November 16th.