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American Morning

Alzheimer's Changes Everything for Victims, Caregivers

Aired November 13, 2003 - 08:22   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Alzheimer's changes everything for the victims and the caregivers. More than four million Americans suffer from the devastating disease which steals their memories and ultimately their lives.
Working to find a cure is a labor of love for Leeza Gibbons since her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's four years ago. The former talk show host has established a memory foundation to help people with memory disorders.

And she joins us this morning to talk about that.

Good morning.

Nice to see you.

LEEZA GIBBONS: Thanks for having me, so much.

O'BRIEN: It's my pleasure and it's nice to meet you.

Tell me a little bit about your mom's experience and your experience with your mom's Alzheimer's. There were signs. She was growing more forgetful. There were things that you didn't recognize right away.

GIBBONS: Exactly. Pretty classic behaviors, really. Her personality began to change. She was always very social. She loved to be out and about. And she would start doing this and kind of pulling at her clothes. And her personality got smaller in many ways. She became agitated, forgetful, repetitive. And I thought, you know, mom's world is getting less involved and maybe she's just kind of recycling the same stories.

But you can see here this was very recent. She now has that Alzheimer's trance where, I call it the beast, has really gotten its hooks in her.

O'BRIEN: What does -- does she recognize you? Does she recognize your brothers and sisters and your children?

GIBBONS: No. There are moments of lucidity and we call those little kisses from the angels, where she will have some sort of cognition and we hang onto that. Meanwhile, she's very physically healthy. And I think this disease is progressing so rapidly and there's a lot of innovation that, you know, now there are, like with AIDS, there are cocktails and drugs that you can take together. And she's responding to some of those. O'BRIEN: She must have known, though, early on that she had Alzheimer's, because she pushed to figure out what was wrong. She knew something was wrong. How devastating was it for her, who was lucid, at that point, enough to understand that something was horribly wrong, to know that she had the same diagnosis as your grandmother?

GIBBONS: She saw her mother die of it. She had to be so scared and yet so courageous and ultimately gave us such a gift by recognizing it, by forcing us to deal with it. She's the one who got us all together and got us in for a diagnosis. This is not a disease that will wait for you to be ready. Mom gave us our marching orders, including telling me I want you to talk about this. Take my story and make it count, because this story belongs to so many people and they need help.

O'BRIEN: Have you seen, in all that you've done now in Alzheimer's, that many people kind of hide in the sand, that they're ashamed, they're embarrassed or they really just don't even know what to do so they do nothing?

GIBBONS: You hit it exactly. People keep this very private, which I understand. Misplaced shame, misplaced stigma, and that's exactly why the memory foundation we've opened and we open this week in New York, but soon to be all across the country, community centers we call Leeza's Place, where we deal with memory disorder, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, M.S., brain trauma, stroke. A safe, intimate setting for the newly diagnosed, for their caregivers and loved ones, to deal with a care advocate and adjust to what is a very frightening new reality.

O'BRIEN: Your dad is, was, for a long time, the primary caregiver for your mom, although I know you've got people in now because she has deteriorated to such a great degree.

GIBBONS: Right.

O'BRIEN: How is he holding up? I mean you can't even imagine the person you love and you're married to sort of having this major disease and then on top of it just how physically difficult it is to take care of someone whose memory is going.

GIBBONS: Daddy, 50 years they've been married, and he sees her twice a day. She's in a skilled care setting now. But he loves her so purely and it's very hard on caregivers. They're under recognized. This is a noble thing that people do. But when there are rages, when there's profanity, when there's anger and when you don't get any credit for what you do, that's very, very hard.

O'BRIEN: For people who want more information about Leeza's Place, we should mention, can go to the Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation, which is memoryfoundation.org.

Leeza Gibbons, it's nice to have you.

Thanks for coming in to talk about a circumstance that I know is very tough for you and your whole family. So we appreciate it.

GIBBONS: I'll be lighting a candle for her tonight. We're at St. Thomas here in New York and we invite all caregivers and people with the disease, if you just want to honor or recognize someone, please come by and do that.

O'BRIEN: Well, that's nice to hear.

Thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired November 13, 2003 - 08:22   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Alzheimer's changes everything for the victims and the caregivers. More than four million Americans suffer from the devastating disease which steals their memories and ultimately their lives.
Working to find a cure is a labor of love for Leeza Gibbons since her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's four years ago. The former talk show host has established a memory foundation to help people with memory disorders.

And she joins us this morning to talk about that.

Good morning.

Nice to see you.

LEEZA GIBBONS: Thanks for having me, so much.

O'BRIEN: It's my pleasure and it's nice to meet you.

Tell me a little bit about your mom's experience and your experience with your mom's Alzheimer's. There were signs. She was growing more forgetful. There were things that you didn't recognize right away.

GIBBONS: Exactly. Pretty classic behaviors, really. Her personality began to change. She was always very social. She loved to be out and about. And she would start doing this and kind of pulling at her clothes. And her personality got smaller in many ways. She became agitated, forgetful, repetitive. And I thought, you know, mom's world is getting less involved and maybe she's just kind of recycling the same stories.

But you can see here this was very recent. She now has that Alzheimer's trance where, I call it the beast, has really gotten its hooks in her.

O'BRIEN: What does -- does she recognize you? Does she recognize your brothers and sisters and your children?

GIBBONS: No. There are moments of lucidity and we call those little kisses from the angels, where she will have some sort of cognition and we hang onto that. Meanwhile, she's very physically healthy. And I think this disease is progressing so rapidly and there's a lot of innovation that, you know, now there are, like with AIDS, there are cocktails and drugs that you can take together. And she's responding to some of those. O'BRIEN: She must have known, though, early on that she had Alzheimer's, because she pushed to figure out what was wrong. She knew something was wrong. How devastating was it for her, who was lucid, at that point, enough to understand that something was horribly wrong, to know that she had the same diagnosis as your grandmother?

GIBBONS: She saw her mother die of it. She had to be so scared and yet so courageous and ultimately gave us such a gift by recognizing it, by forcing us to deal with it. She's the one who got us all together and got us in for a diagnosis. This is not a disease that will wait for you to be ready. Mom gave us our marching orders, including telling me I want you to talk about this. Take my story and make it count, because this story belongs to so many people and they need help.

O'BRIEN: Have you seen, in all that you've done now in Alzheimer's, that many people kind of hide in the sand, that they're ashamed, they're embarrassed or they really just don't even know what to do so they do nothing?

GIBBONS: You hit it exactly. People keep this very private, which I understand. Misplaced shame, misplaced stigma, and that's exactly why the memory foundation we've opened and we open this week in New York, but soon to be all across the country, community centers we call Leeza's Place, where we deal with memory disorder, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, M.S., brain trauma, stroke. A safe, intimate setting for the newly diagnosed, for their caregivers and loved ones, to deal with a care advocate and adjust to what is a very frightening new reality.

O'BRIEN: Your dad is, was, for a long time, the primary caregiver for your mom, although I know you've got people in now because she has deteriorated to such a great degree.

GIBBONS: Right.

O'BRIEN: How is he holding up? I mean you can't even imagine the person you love and you're married to sort of having this major disease and then on top of it just how physically difficult it is to take care of someone whose memory is going.

GIBBONS: Daddy, 50 years they've been married, and he sees her twice a day. She's in a skilled care setting now. But he loves her so purely and it's very hard on caregivers. They're under recognized. This is a noble thing that people do. But when there are rages, when there's profanity, when there's anger and when you don't get any credit for what you do, that's very, very hard.

O'BRIEN: For people who want more information about Leeza's Place, we should mention, can go to the Leeza Gibbons Memory Foundation, which is memoryfoundation.org.

Leeza Gibbons, it's nice to have you.

Thanks for coming in to talk about a circumstance that I know is very tough for you and your whole family. So we appreciate it.

GIBBONS: I'll be lighting a candle for her tonight. We're at St. Thomas here in New York and we invite all caregivers and people with the disease, if you just want to honor or recognize someone, please come by and do that.

O'BRIEN: Well, that's nice to hear.

Thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com