[MUSIC PLAYING] I really love the idea of story-- to me, it's the essence of humanity and being able to bring that humanity into the healthcare system, especially where there's so little humanity, and we live by these checklists, and these things that we have to do, and these diagnoses, and clinical sort of terms. And I saw my dad being treated like that. He was very much checklist to these caregivers. They never looked at him as a human until I wrote his story. 

I was born in Kellys Ford, 1924. My sister and I loved to climb all the trees. And this has helped me through life, really. And then go climb up the tree, and find a spot to sit. Then we'd have to move about. 

And I learned in tree climbing that sometimes, you can just hold on to a leaf, and that'll help you get that balance. And we had to be careful. Because if we fell, we might fall against three limbs before we hit the ground. And, recently, when I've become so extremely ill, I would actually say out loud, I'm a tree climber. I'm a tree climber. And it has helped me through life. 

MemoryWell is a digital platform for life storytelling with the aim of improving healthcare outcomes. It really grew out of my experience caregiving for my father who had Alzheimer's. And, a few years ago when I moved him into a community, they asked me to fill out this enormous 20-page questionnaire about his life. And I was a Time magazine correspondent at that point, and I challenge anybody to answer some of those questions. 

And who was ever going to read and remember 20 pages of handwritten data points for the almost hundred residents in that particular community? Nobody, right? Instead, I handed in the form blank, and I was like, look. I think it's just easier for me and easier for you if I just write down his story since I'm a writer. 

Dementia is something that people have been trying to solve for a really long time from a cure perspective but nothing from the care perspective. And that's what's lacking in our healthcare system right now. Jay looked at it from the lens and understood, because she lived it, that in order to transform care, you have to start with the person. When a person goes into assisted living, those people around them have no idea who that person is. 

Most of these staff members turn over at an average rate of more than 75% annually. So there's a huge amount of churn in a lot of these communities. 

So how is a caregiver who knows nothing about the person they're trying to help really supposed to help them? If you capture their stories the way MemoryWell does, caregivers start to empathize with that person. 

My mom died at the age of 59 of a brain aneurysm in 2011, which was stress-induced. And it was directly related to her caregiving of my father. It was just too much for her. 

Dementia is a really tough disease to deal with. You feel like you lose that person every day a little bit more. They call that the continual death. 

The amount of care it takes, it's like living with a toddler. Really, one of the bigger worries is often worrying about the caregivers. 40% of dementia primary caregivers die before the ones that they're caring for because the stress is so great. So it really is like a double disease like it takes two lives. 

How are you? 

Well, I'm fine. Thank you. 

It's a cold one today. 

Yes, it is. A little bit chilly. I love this park. My husband and I used to walk it every day. 

So I want to go back to your childhood for a minute and ask about the horse and buggy. 

Yes, I remember seeing it. 

AARP did a really famous study that found that loneliness and social isolation in seniors was actually more dangerous than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. 

Life review can be extremely therapeutic. Especially during the time of COVID now, we have found that this is a way for people, during a really hard time when a lot of people have been socially isolated, when they can look back on happier times. 

My brother yelled, "Hold on. Hold on." I mean, I did hold on. I survived. 

And it can be just a really almost religious experience. 

We go through different chapters of people's lives. And with different questions, we try to just trigger different memories. And we're looking for stories, stories that can really evoke the senses, I mean, to bring them back to a different time and place like Alta climbing the trees. 

My husband and I used to come here every morning. And I used to take this walk. And when we got to that bridge, we'd turn around and come back. And we'd turn around and give one another a kiss on the bridge. And then when my husband died, he was cremated. And some of his ashes were spread up there by the kissing bridge so lots of memories. 

There really are no treatments for Alzheimer's and dementia, right? There's almost no drugs that you can use that will effectively treat this. There's no cure. The vast majority of treatment is actually almost all in behavioral, in psychological, in really understanding those people, and bringing out, engaging with them, their histories and their life stories. And the more you engage them, the more you keep their brains active, the better their quality of life is for the longer amount of time. 

Hi. 

Hi, Jay. 

Good to see you. 

Good to see you. So I brought you your story. This is the timeline, which you guys can continue to build on. 

Oh, we can add to it? 

Yeah, and you can invite all your family and friends to add things if they want-- 

Oh, wow. 

--and stories of their own. 

Oh, that's neat. 

Makes me want to cry. 

In a story, you've caught light in a bottle, and you remember the person you love. And instead of thinking about your loss, you remember the joy of why you love that person. And you remember the good times instead of the sad ones. 

Quote, "'You have to be very careful. Otherwise, you'd fall right out of the tree and probably hit two or three limbs on the way down,' Alta says." The irony is that this is actually the best treatment for Alzheimer's and dementia is just being able to know them, and have everybody around them know them, and work with them to remember things. 

It looks like when you follow the trees. You'd have to cross-- 

I think that people sometimes look at us and go, oh, that's just a nice-to-have. But I think, especially now, people realize that human connection isn't just a nice-to-have. 

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