Memory Bank

Camping with Alzheimer's disease

Early on my in my father’s journey with Alzheimer’s disease, he developed an obsession with finding aluminum pop and beer cans.  He would spend hours every day out walking around the neighbourhood looking for aluminum cans.  This meant digging through garbage bins, walking along ditches and checking out the backs of pick-up trucks.  It was amazing how good he got at spotting cans in the ditches while cruising along the highway at almost 100km.
All of us in the family had to learn to look at this fetish with “different eyeglasses.”  It was part of his dementia journey and the more we tried to stop this behaviour, the more determined and sneakier he got at getting out of the house to go collecting.