Kerri Sutherland didn’t know how to spell Alzheimer’s and now unfortunately, and fortunately, she’s well-versed in the disease.
Sutherland will be recognized this Sunday when loved ones lace up their sneakers on the West Vancouver waterfront for the Investors Group Walk for Alzheimer’s.
A longtime Alzheimer Society of B.C. volunteer, Sutherland is this year’s North Shore walk honouree.She began her involvement with the society as a participant in a family caregiver support group in 1998 after her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Sutherland had been spending a lot of time with her parents while helping her mom recover from heart surgery. But it was her dad that had her worried.
Sutherland wrote to a friend and said: “You know, there’s something wrong with my dad.” She wondered if it was Alzheimer’s.
“And I actually had to get up and find a dictionary and look up how to spell it,” says Sutherland. “I knew nothing about (Alzheimer’s) except that it was just that people couldn’t remember things. And I know now that it’s way more than that.”
Sutherland’s mother died in September 1998 and by that November she had her dad diagnosed. The doctor asked him what season it was, as part of a standardized cognitive test.
“He said it was the rainy season,” recalls Sutherland. That was her dad’s newfound way of compensating for what he couldn’t remember.
Painting a picture of what it’s like to be a caregiver for someone with Alzheimer’s, Sutherland is frank. “It’s exhausting – very exhausting,” says Sutherland, who relocated from Toronto to move in with her dad.
Sutherland’s dad was a wanderer, which was “pretty scary,” especially after he showed up unannounced at church one day. He had fallen, lost his glasses and his face was bloodied.
“The difference between wandering and pacing is wandering always has a destination. And I think my father was always looking for my mother,” says Sutherland.
She found comfort in an Alzheimer’s caregiver support group on the North Shore.
Twenty years later, Sutherland still keeps in touch with people from group who were bonded by the intense, emotional journey. Some members formed a dinner club called Forget Me Not.
While supporting her father, Sutherland put her fundraising background to use and boosted the proceeds of the Alzheimer Society’s Coffee Break event on the North Shore by 900 per cent as a volunteer.
Sutherland later took her fundraising to new heights, raising more than $20,000 for the Society in 2011 by cycling the 800-kilometre Camino de Santiago route in Spain.
“I did the ride because I felt that my dad had been taken out of his comfort zone by a diagnosis that wasn’t forthcoming,” says Sutherland. “I had to think of something that would take me out of my comfort zone, too.”
Sutherland went on to become an Alzheimer’s Society employee, working as a support and education co-ordinator in the North Shore resource centre, retiring last year. Her dad died in 2003 but his memory lives on in his daughter’s altruism.
Sutherland has stayed on as an Alzheimer’s support group facilitator, to pay it forward and trace those steps again – this time holding the hand of those just starting the journey or wearily walking towards the end.
“I think I saw the need for people to be educated,” she says of why she continues to volunteer. “They needed to know there was help because I think it’s a huge learning curve.”
Three weeks into one of Sutherland’s Shaping the Journey workshops for people experiencing early symptom of dementia, one of the attendees approached her with feedback: “When I leave here,” they said, “I feel so hopeful.”
“If that’s what I can give you when you’re facing your diagnosis, it’s worth it to me,” Sutherland says of her long-term involvement. “You have to be hopeful.”
Sutherland’s role as a support group facilitator is to ensure equal opportunity for participants to share in a safe and respectful setting, says Bronwyn James, support and education co-ordinator at the Alzheimer Society of B.C.’s North Shore and Sunshine Coast support centre in Lynn Valley.
“Kerri brings to her role the confidence of someone who has travelled the dementia journey and who can guide the group through tough discussions with empathy, humour and a bag full of resources,” says James.
“She makes everyone she meets feel special, she never forgets them or their story. She has made a difference for so many people on the North Shore.”
Sutherland is quite humble about the honour. “I was just doing my job,” she says.
The Investors Group Walk for Alzheimer’s takes participants along a five-kilometre stretch of Centennial Seawalk starting at 11:30 a.m.
