A Moment of Reflection on Alzheimer's Disease


Dr. Robert Santulli has generously extended a special invitation to all Dartmouth students.  Dr. Santulli is a geriatric psychiatrist who oversees many of the community activities regarding Alzheimer's disease (including the Memory Clinic that several students  participate in).


On Sunday, February 28, at 2 PM in the Howe Library's Mayer Room (this is the Hanover town library directly adjacent to Ramunto's) , there will be a staging of a performance of 'Norman and Beatrice'.  This is a terrific short (30 min) play about a couple in which the husband, Norman, has Alzheimer's and his wife, Beatrice, struggles lovingly to care for him.  Two undergrads (Lucas Valença '16 & Penelope Williams '16) play Norman and Beatrice, and Tolu Kehinde, a second year Geisel student, is the narrator.  The playwright, Barbara Hammond, is coming up from New York and afterward, there will be a discussion with the actors and Barbara, which he will moderate.  it apparently always has a deep effect on the audience.  It also leads to a very good discussion of the illness and the challenges of caregiving.    The play is actually about Barbara's parents; her father had Alzheimer's, and its quite realistic. According to Dr. Santulli, it should be all over by 3 or so.  There will be some food and drink during the discussion.  People from the community will also be attending.


We hope many of you will consider attending.  It is very likely that each of you will be touched by Alzheimer's Disease in your family/friends  as our population ages, so a short reflection on its impact on patients and families is timely.


See also the attached playbill.


-Nathan Smith Society Executive Committee


PS:  A heads-up:  Dr. Santulli will also be teaching a course in the PBS Department in the winter of 2017, 'Living with Dementia'.  It will be partly didactic and partly experiential:  students will  attend Memory Café, Perspectives, or Recollections, or one of the other dementia engagement activities in the works during their time in the course. Goals of the course will be to learn about dementia from the perspective of the person with the disease and his or her spouse, and to integrate didactic learning with experiential learning.