KENTWOOD, Mich. — A West Michigan senior living community is offering families, staff and community members a firsthand look at what it's like to live with dementia or Alzheimer's disease through a virtual dementia simulator.
Commonwealth Senior Living uses the simulator to give participants an immersive experience of the challenges their loved ones face daily.
WATCH: Dementia simulator at local senior living facility
Amy Lynch, a granddaughter and daughter-in-law of two family members who have experienced Alzheimer's and dementia, knows that reality all too well.
"Forgetting the people that they loved and that they were close with, that's the hardest part, and even eventually forgetting how to do everyday activities, as far as even taking care of themselves," Lynch said.
Lynch's mother-in-law, Irene, lived at Commonwealth Senior Living for years before passing away last September.
"It's a tough, very tough, to watch a loved one go through it," Lynch said.
Lynch also shared a memory of her grandmother who stayed with her.
"She would just glance at me and say, 'Oh, hey, I remember you. You're the daughter I chose,' because she used to tell me that all the time," Lynch said.
The simulator uses a combination of physical tools to replicate the sensory experience of dementia. Participants wear pokey spikes in their shoes to simulate foot pain, oven mitts to make gripping items more difficult, vision-reducing glasses, and headphones that produce muffled noises similar to what dementia patients may hear.
While wearing the equipment, participants are asked to complete everyday tasks — a challenge I experienced firsthand.
"This is like almost impossible," I said during the simulation. "Just the vision alone is throwing me off, let alone all the muffledness."
Attempting to handle change from a coin purse proved especially difficult.
"This change in the coin purse is gonna be impossible. Wow, this is so hard," I said. "And I just dropped a lot more."
Tracy Prince, a staff member at Commonwealth Senior Living also has two family members with dementia, said the experience is designed to build empathy.
"It kind of gives them a taste of what someone with dementia and or Alzheimer's would have and what they could potentially be going through," Tracy said.
For Tracy, going through the simulator herself was an emotional experience.
"I cried during the whole thing, because just it brings to light exactly what your loved one's going through, and when they ask you a question 10 times in two minutes, or if they say repeat themselves the same time within five minutes, you know, it's just you then kind of understand," Tracy said.
For Lynch, the simulator offered a new and heartbreaking perspective.
"It's very heartbreaking, because you weren't aware of everything that they had to deal with and all the pressures that they were under trying to even make it feel normal," Lynch said.
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