MANILA, Philippines - Louis Theroux spends time with America’s growing population of dementia sufferers and sees how families maintain relationships with their loved ones even as the building blocks of personality and character are eroded.
Phoenix, Arizona is home to thousands of retirees and a growing number of them now has dementia.
Gary, 69, is a resident at senior living campus Beatitudes. He no longer remembers that he is married to his wife Carla, and believes he’s back serving in the military. As Carla struggles to maintain a relationship with someone whose memory is disappearing, dementia proves no barrier to Gary trying to form new relationships with several other women.
Then there’s 89-year-old Nancy, an ex-New York model, with a personality to match. At the request of her husband John Louis has his hands full as he takes over the role of “carer†for a day.
But dementia is not just a disease of the elderly. It can strike people in their 40s and sometimes even earlier. Louis meets 49-year-old Selinda and family who are coming to terms with the devastating diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.
Extreme Love: Dementia airs tomorrow, Feb. 10 at 8 p.m. on Solar News Channel.