It was around 3 p.m. on Friday, when the staff of a daycare centre, for senior citizens suffering from dementia, realised that something was amiss.
One of their patients, a 70-year-old and most probably without money (patients are picked up and dropped off at home by the facility), had gone missing.
She was suspected to have jumped over the wall and walked away from the centre located in south Bengaluru.
Over the next couple of hours, the staff members left no stone unturned, alerting the police, informing the elders’ helpline. They even approached media houses seeking to place “missing person” advertisements.
Alerts were also sent by the centre and the family and friends, who were by then informed, on social media.
“We retrieved a photo of hers from our records, made multiple copies and sent them out. Our staff divided themselves into teams and starting looking out for her,” said a senior staff member.
For the family, it was deja vu. “This is not the first time that she has wandered off. Her family said that she had once wandered away and reached her native place outside Bengaluru,” the staff member said.
It was around 7.30 p.m. that they found her in south Bengaluru.
She had boarded an autorickshaw. The driver, noticing that she was unable to give a particular destination, stopped at a junction and enquired with the people.
Co-incidentally, the daycare staffers spotted her there and took her back.
‘Wandering patients,’ as they are referred to, run the risk of exhausting themselves, as they are not known to seek food or water, or become victims of traffic accidents.
But with over 30,000 known patients of dementia in Bengaluru, the problem is serious.
In fact, one such ‘wandering patient’ was one of the main protagonists in the recent Kannada flick Godhi Banna Sadharana Mykattu, starring Anant Nag, who has Alzheimer’s, wandering off after a shopping trip with his son, leading to an interesting set of events as the film moves forward.
Another fact is also that awareness about dementia is woefully low. As Radha S. Murthy, managing trustee, Nightingales Medical Trust, said that unusual behaviour such as forgetting whole incidents and never being able to recall them, placing keys in the refrigerator, or repeating the same questions, are often treated as common signs of ageing, which they may not be.
The challenge to the family does not end with diagnosis. Persons with dementia have to be monitored to keep them from wandering off, and tracing them if they do.
In extreme cases, such persons are known to sit next to the gate even in highly secured environments, or even scale compound walls to get away, sometimes reaching different cities if they manage to get away. There is no known reason that fuels this tendency, doctors say.
Rashmi’s (name changed) mother started showing signs of dementia when she was 66 years old.
Their encounter with the wandering episodes was when she walked off to the end of the road thrice.
A special kind of front door which opens only with a key from the inside was installed. But that did not prevent them from their first real scare, when her mother walked out when their domestic help entered the house.
She was finally found sitting in a park that she used to visit before a leg pain prevented her from continuing her walks.
“Keeping them indoors could lead to some frustration. It helps if they are taken out every day for a little time. It is also important to keep them occupied in an organised activity, preferably something familiar to them. In my mother’s case, it was basic household chores such as folding the clothes or cutting vegetables,” Ms. Rashmi said.
Vineeth’s (name changed) story is eerily similar to Godhi Banna Sadharana Mykattu, except that it ends in a facility. His father (now 73) was lost for three whole days. “Someone had given him ₹100 and when we found him, he had ₹70. He was extremely dehydrated and he had just gone around the city,” he said.
The family employed someone to be with him all the time. But when his father started getting aggressive when he was not allowed to go out, sometimes banging his head against the wall, it started taking a toll on Mr. Vineeth’s mother.
“That is when I decided to admit him into a facility against everyone’s will. I did not want to lose my mother too,” he said.
Several measures have been tested to make the tracing process easier, including tagging their clothes with contact numbers and bracelets inscribed with identification and contact numbers.
“But some of them take it off,” said S Premkumar Raja, co-founder and secretary of NMT, which is now trying its hand with a GPS-enabled watch-like wearable device and a dedicated support service for track and trace for dementia cases in addition to the existing helpline for dementia-related information.
