00:00My father had Alzheimer's. Unfortunately, he passed away two years ago and three months
00:07after it was my mom. She was the caregiver of my dad. His inspiration behind Forget Me Not.
00:18We are a social enterprise raising awareness on Alzheimer's disease and promoting quality
00:24of life for seniors and also now caregivers here in the UAE since 2013.
00:30My father had Alzheimer's. Unfortunately, he passed away two years ago and three months
00:37after it was my mom. She was the caregiver of my dad. His inspiration behind Forget Me Not.
00:46And now the second inspiration is my father-in-law because he has Parkinson's plus Alzheimer's.
00:52My dad is actually part of this group. That's how he really likes to be around people. So his talent
00:59is basically singing. So he loves to be around people to bring joy to music. So that's how he
01:04entered the group and he's been with Alzheimer's organization for five years. Right now we're like
01:10almost over a hundred senior expats or above 60 and there's actually more outside Dubai.
01:16So they are my second plan. We provide social support as to not only Alzheimer patients
01:23but seniors who are six years old and above. Lots of cognitive activities. We do a lot of trips.
01:30We do a lot of artistic initiatives like painting pizza. We bake pizza. We do cupcakes.
01:38We've done almost everything you know to keep them very engaged. My dad suffers from
01:44vascular dementia. It wasn't easy. Initially it's very hard to diagnose because he was still
01:50fully functional and he wouldn't heal. He was forgetting things but we all are honestly. So
01:56initially you think it's a part of just getting older. It took a couple of years before somebody
02:02finally diagnosed him with it and in the meantime his memory and his general cognitive function
02:11started getting worse. They've been amazing because they've been extremely helpful in
02:15finding social events for him to go. Obviously he's not from here. We're Italian and he never
02:22so he doesn't have a lot of connections here. Forget Me Not became like a second family.
02:28Something he was looking up to attending the events. I actually went to two of them with him.
02:36One of them we did painting and he he loved it because I mean neither of us are artists
02:44so our final piece was pretty bad but he came home and he was making jokes and you know.
02:53It's been a very very hectic time for my mom the past 10 years. To see my mother
02:59deteriorating from dementia at the end was very very difficult on us. One day I met
03:08Mrs Shiraz who is a friend of us and part of the Forget Me Not association and so I met Shiraz and
03:18then one day I met also her friend Samir. Mr Samir Amun is a friend of us. He's from Lebanon also
03:26and we became friends and then so with Shiraz and with my mother with Samir and with Samir's help
03:33we started also giving joy to this group. The small group but then Samir one day introduced
03:40me and my mom to the Forget Me Not group which is amazing. I was very impressed when I went the
03:47first time for the first event and then from there on we went to another event and I got all the time
03:55connected with the group. We realized that she's suffering from Alzheimer's
04:01around 2019-20. To be specific I think 2020. That's when we really realized that she's
04:07suffering from that. We were not ready to accept it initially but then we had taken her to the
04:13doctor and then got her examined and they did some tests you know and then they confirmed.
04:19That's how we got to know about this. It's not that difficult to deal with it because she's
04:24in general she's a very happy person, very positive person so it's not that
04:28difficult to deal with it. You all are very good people.
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