Dec 28, 2014 5 min read

Gotham City has Batman.

Alzheimer’s caregivers have Teepa Snow.

An occupational therapist and dementia-care educator, Snow is on the road about 300 days a year, traveling across the United States and Canada to teach families and professional care specialists how to be better caregivers.

She spent one week earlier this month at Presbyterian SeniorCare dementia units in Washington and Oakmont and led a seminar on celebrating the holidays with loved ones who have Alzheimer’s or dementia.

Snow, petite and slender with gray hair pulled back in a ponytail and dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks, has gained a loyal following, in large part because of her teaching style.

Snow role plays, adopting the personality of an Alzheimer’s patient, and then provides strategies on how to avoid or defuse stressful situations that dementia patients encounter.

Upbeat and energetic, Snow has a knack for delivering her message in a simple, down-to-earth way.

“She’s amazing, and her energy and ability to communicate with Alzheimer’s patients and to teach caregivers how to care for those patients is special,” said Julie Elling, a dementia care expert at Presbyterian SeniorCare.

Snow said her goal is to provide a better quality of life for people with dementia and their caregivers by sharing what she’s learned during her more than 30 years working with dementia patients.

“This is a journey, and we know how the journey is going to end. The question is, how am I going to get there?” said Snow. “We want to look for moments of joy. The challenge is that I have to give up what was, and if you and I know the right things to do on the journey, we can have joyful moments.”

Snow is worried that the United States isn’t prepared for the growing number of elderly who will suffer from Alzheimer’s within the next decade. More than 5 million Americans now have the disease and within 10 years, nearly 13 1/2 million Americans could be living with it, unless a cure is found.

“We’re about to hit the baby boomers, and we really don’t have a plan that works. We’re nowhere near where we need to be at this time to deal with it,” said Snow. “We also have the problem that this disease spans eight to 12 years on average. It’s the third most expensive disease to have, but it’s at the bottom of the barrel for reimbursement. Most of Alzheimer’s expenses are out-of-the-pocket, and incontinence products alone will put a family in debt, let alone sitter service or support service or community living.”

Although decades of research have yielded important discoveries, the cause of Alzheimer’s largely remains a mystery, and there is no cure.

So the question, according to Snow, is how can we better care for those who suffer from Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia?

“We have to build skills, and building skills is very different than having awareness and knowledge of dementia. We don’t have dementia competencies that are part of a training program on a national or international level,” said Snow, who points out the toll Alzheimer’s takes on caregivers. “Helping family and staff is critical because over 70 percent of care is delivered by family members and community volunteers. We, as a society, have to get involved. If we don’t figure out how to give care in a way that doesn’t strip us of all of our resources, and I mean emotional and physical and financial and physiological resources, we’re going to wear out our caregivers. This is a marathon, and you cannot do this alone. We’ve got to build teams.”

Snow has developed a Gems system (based on precious gems) to rate the abilities of a person with dementia. It ranges from sapphire, which includes the normal effects of aging, to pearl, which represents a person in the last stages of dementia.

It’s important, she said, to provide dementia patients with opportunities for a quality of life at the various stages.

Snow has clinical appointments with Duke University’s School of Nursing and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. She lived briefly in Allegheny County.

There is a real urgency that Americans learn about Alzheimer’s: what are the risk factors and what resources are available to families with loved ones suffering from it.

“While we have a little bit of time, we need to get smart about this condition. We all need to be involved in this. Frankly, there’s no way out. You can pretend like there is, but within 15 years it’s going to affect 1 out of 2 families, so even if it’s not in my family, I’m going to struggle with it because I’ll have to pull someone else’s weight while they’re dealing with their mom or their sister,” said Snow. “We’ve got to own this.”

Teepa Snow’s website can be accessed at teepasnow.com and contains information for professional and family caregivers.