If you met Nancy Nelson anywhere but the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, you’d hardly suspect that she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in 2013.
“I was jarred in ways that I really never knew,” Nelson says of the day that changed her life. “Within days, I started waking up between three and five in the morning because words were coming to me. I would just write and write and write. I couldn’t write chapter books because I couldn’t keep the thoughts together, but I could write poetry.”
She went on to publish many of those late-night scrawlings in her first poetry collection, Blue. River. Apple., which she named after the three words doctors asked her to remember as part of the diagnostic process. Although the longtime Valley resident, now 81, was eventually handed a “better diagnosis” of mild cognitive impairment in 2018, her family history of Alzheimer’s led her to continue to combat the threat of fading memories through art.
Lately, Nelson has been getting her fix at Opening Minds Through Art, a new Lou Ruvo Center offering that pairs people living with dementia with a volunteer—usually a local high school or college student—who helps them create a series of artistic projects over the course of eight weekly sessions.
Participants and volunteers at the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center work on a project during an art program that focuses on people living with dementia.
Las Vegas’ first batch of Opening Minds Through Art courses began this summer after Lou Ruvo Center community engagement program manager Verla Niebuhr leveraged a post-pandemic grant to bring the nationally-touted program—first developed in 2007 by Dr. Elizabeth Lokon at the Ohio-based Miami University Scripps Gerontology Center—to the Valley.
“The world of people with dementia shrinks a lot after a diagnosis, and having social opportunities is really important, because isolation is a killer for the brain. You need to be out there and engaged,” Niebuhr says.
Opening Minds Through Art undoubtedly offers this sense of community, but it’s also purposefully designed to help dementia patients tap into some of the senses that remain strong long after they’re diagnosed.
“Art and music live in a different part of the brain, and that creative part of us stays alive until the very end—even in people with dementia,” Niebuhr says. “Interestingly enough, people who have never even done art previously in their lives can sometimes thrive creatively once they develop dementia. We’re all artists, but we tend to put up our own barriers and get more self-conscious as we mature. This seems to fade away once you develop dementia, because what you think you can’t do just doesn’t occur to you anymore.”
At the final August 5 regular session, Nelson channeled her inspirations into an inkblot painting she titled “Purple Perseverance.”
Just across the table, Rosemarie Berger, 85, worked on her own piece with College of Southern Nevada freshman Jaimie Rendon.
While Nelson is fully aware of her relationship to the disease and an outspoken advocate for “daring to do dementia differently,” Berger’s daughter and full-time caretaker, Laura Berger, jokingly says Rosemarie “missed the meeting” on her own diagnosis.
Rosemarie’s condition can sometimes blur her ability to recognize her daughter or the caretaker role she took up three years ago, but Laura shakes it off with poise and good humor as the pair continue to “create new memories” together.
“It’s just like the tables have turned. She raised me, and now I’m raising her,” Laura Berger says. “This journey has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done—testing my strength, patience and heart in ways I could have never imagined. But it’s also been the most rewarding experience of my life—filled with moments of connection, gratitude and deep love.”
In time, Laura Berger and the volunteer Jaimie Rendon both found that Rosemarie’s participation in Opening Minds Through Art and another music therapy program at the clinic seem to have had a profound impact on her ability to recall previously dormant memories.
“When I first started working with Rosemarie, she was very closed off. She didn’t want to do any of the art and would just keep telling me about how her parents are in town, even though they’ve passed,” Rendon says. “When I finally got her to participate in the third week, she suddenly remembered that her daughter is living with her and taking care of her and that her parents are dead. It was so eye opening and amazing, even if it only lasted for 30 minutes.”
Niebuhr has seen plenty of similar stories unfold during Opening Minds Through Art’s inaugural run, which is set to conclude with a final showcase on September 15. She plans to bring it back for another eight weeks in February and March and believes the program will continue to grow here if she’s able to recruit a larger class of volunteers.
In the meantime, Nelson intends to stay busy with her dementia advocacy group, Dangle and Dot, which works to challenge the stigmas associated with dementia through public speaking and other outreach campaigns. In her own time, she also participates in scientific studies on the conditions she and her Opening Minds Through Art peers are living with.
“I never say I have it, I only say I’ve been diagnosed. Even though I know it, I tell myself I don’t have to ingest it and own it,” Nelson says. “I want to help people, and by helping others, I feel better. That’s a gift for me, and I am beyond grateful for it all.”
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