Institution Hill View

Tom's was in his late fifties when dementia had taken control of his life . He was out of control and needed full time care .
Ardy was working for with mental health and had sharply risen through the quagmire of being a rookie in the local community health team .
Ardy had heard about Tom and tried to heal some of the wounds of Tom's past .

During his life Tom had discovered one common denominator with where he was at . He had met many people who drank a lot .
Most of those people were strangers .
Few of them ended up to be friends .
He had never considered that he had a problem .
He was just someone who liked drinking in the company with other people and during his day to day confrontation with other alcoholics he felt no emotion other than anger at the place he had come to .

This angry man was now growing old and he began to behave badly with those who tried to help him .
He treated nurses and doctors like fools and used and abused them .
His selfish and aggressive behaviour seemed to work .
People gave up trying to help him .

However there was one exception and I must admit being tarred with the same brush may have helped Ardy, who himself was a reformed alcoholic get to grips with Tom's situation .
Tom was now a resident of the residential care facility known as Institution Hill View. All day long Tom went around looking for a drink .
Ardy recognised the ritual quiet well . Tom would open doors and cupboards and secretly hide things away here and there . In the process he often found a bottle of gin in the process .
Ardy allowed that to happen .

I suppose if we dig deeper into any situation we will uncover dirt .
It seemed that everywhere Tom went he was in his own mind meeting other alcoholics and never aware that some of the other residents of Institution Hill View were in there of their own choice .

Time after time Ardy was on his knees asking for help in prayer for God to help him with Tom . Each day nothing ever came back in prayer but Tom continued to pray .

Tom was getting more difficult to control and it was mentioned that he should be sent to a mental home for treatment .
Out of the blue , Ardy had his answer ' Tom needed to be an example to all those who thought medication and shock treatment was the answer .
Ardy was going to rewrite some of the pages on mental health .
Ardy was going to dig even deeper to find out what lay underneath all the dirt of dementia and see how new methods could be used to tackle the problem before it actually occurred .

Each day he would pray for guidance and slowly he could see things began to fit into place . Like a jigsaw puzzle .

He was permitted to try a new therapy program with Tom .
Speaking not as a mental health worker but instead as another drunk Ardy got through to Tom . From day one of the role play Ardy questioned no more and instead threw himself upon the mercy Tom's demons and monsters of the bottle . When you can become like one with those who are suffering you begin to understand what lies behind the scene and see the picture of the reality that is unseen by others .
Tom's picture was sad but a real one .

Alcoholism is a global problem and Ardy found many people who were affected by this needed new methods of combating the problem before dementia took hold . Secondary dementia is what it was tagged but Ardy called it Al's Prime mover on the highway to dementia .
There were aged care package provided by the government and Ardy was able to access some of the funding to help him build a cluster of presidential care facilities that accommodated persons with Alzheimer's .
The funding he received from Government was boosted by local business and other organizations around the world who could see the vision that Ardy had .
Where there was darkness now there light .
Where there was ignorance now there was re-education and new ways of dealing and healing people who suffered with Big Al .
Some of Al's new age cluster care homes began to sprout up around different countries and slowly but surely they were being filled . From the gutter to the street people found their feet with this parallel lifestyle within Al's care homes . The homes provided more than care . They provided independence and freedom for the clients . They had a real understanding about who they were and some of the early trauma's of the mind were squashed .
From the shelters of back street's and council flats they came , all of them looking for help . From hospitals and nursing homes they were referred on .
Some even had came from prisons and other institutions to become part of a new lifestyle wit Bid Al's homes .
They were the first of their kind and always kept ahead of its time by implementing new strategies of independent living for the residents .
The positive outcome outweighed all the critics and everywhere the story remained the same .
A new way of combating the prime mover of Al was to correct the one common factor on the highway to dementia which was Alcoholism .
Dementia is like tomorrows result of what had gone before .
There is no excuse for this, just ignorance .

Ardy began to re-educate people in mental health to the bigger problem and with any new method of dealing with problems he encountered plenty of anger and frustration from those who had been part the old system .It was ironic that those who were supposed to be alleviating the problem actually stood in the way of progress .
There had to be some resolution for these victim's so on their behalf Ardy carried on regardless .

The story of the alcoholic is one that the world doesn't want to hear .
It is too hard as issue to cope with . It is hard to tell but I believe it is an important story of life . Alcoholics are both men and women .
They are young and old , black skinned and white .
Red skinned and yellow .
Sometimes dementia is an oppressed state of mind .
The victims are depressed and persecuted.
They are not able to understand why they have become the way they are .
Most people fail to see behind the cold walls of ignorance .
They can't feel the anger .
Some day in the future there will be others who will come into town with a bottle in their hand and a clenched fist in the other. They have scars that need to be heard and seen . They are tomorrow's dementia patients .
Look behind the self-pity and guilt because the alcoholic has a heart if you can find it .
When you find it you can see then address the need .
It a mission of the addicted heart .
They are benefactors of a disease and also the recipients.
Not of their own choice but in a lot of cases the bottle has chosen it for them.
Their self inflicted wounds cannot heal by themselves .
They are professional people who may be secret drinkers .
They are social drinkers who fool themselves by drowning their sorrows . They are dementia sufferers who will need a carer to support them. Often their families have given up on them .
I hope you can try to see behind their eyes and become one with them like Ardy had done .
Ardy understood that the real truth was to do no harm and provide care in the area of mental health .
He was one with them and tried to heal the wounds .
He touched briefly the hand of God and in the final account if his wrong doing led him to doing right , surely that's was Gods answer to Ardy in prayer . Christ himself wept for these victims of an addicted heart .
Tom himself a reformed alcoholic understood what damage had been done and what needed to be done to change the system .
He continued to fight the system until he died .
Answers were found along the way .
Thank God for people like Ardy who looked deeper and in doing so kept victims like Tom and many others out of mental hospitals and prisons.

THE END

By Paul McCann