One of the biggest in-home senior care organizations in North America is set to role out a seniors simulator in key locations across the Tri-Cities so that family and other caregivers can get a taste of what it’s like to lose your faculties.

On Friday, this reporter got a sneak peek at the sensory deprivation kit at Home Instead Senior Care’s offices in downtown Port Coquitlam. 

The demonstration dampens three senses, including loss of feeling in the hands, deterioration of eyesight and hearing loss.

To simulate a condition known as neuropathy — the loss of feeling in the fingertips — Mandi Strickland of Home Instead had this reporter slip on two latex gloves. In a low-tech but effective demonstration, each fingertip is filled beforehand with cotton balls to emulate numbed digits.

Once I had the gloves on, Strickland slipped four popsicle sticks down the back of my hand, each one bracing against my knuckles and preventing me from any natural movement. The popsicle sticks, like the effects of arthritis, limit the mobility in the hands, only without the stiffness and pain. Just like that, I have the appendages of an 86-year-old man.

But Strickland’s not finished. Next, she had me slip on a pair of cardboard glasses, the holes partially obstructed to mimic a senior’s deteriorated vision, and earplugs to dampen my hearing. 

The challenge? Open a medicine bottle, remove and return the pills, and then close it up again. Easy.

I tried to palm the lid, while barely making out Strickland’s muffled voice. 

“You’re shouting,” I think she said. Later, she’d tell me I was also bobbing my head around to get a better look at the bottle.

The itty-bitty pills bounced off the table, and after a few moments, I finally got them back into the bottle. The whole thing lasts about five minutes. All that for a low dose of morning medicine — and I hadn’t even tried to grasp a glass of water yet.

That’s when Strickland painted the bigger picture. Consider this, she told me, quoting a recent in-house study that surveyed a thousand Canadians: about 85% of Canadian seniors over 65-years-old have some kind of sensory loss, and of those, one in six say they feel compelled to hide their eroding senses from friends, family and strangers. 

“It’s embarrassing,” said Strickland. “There's a pride factor, I think, especially with the generation of older adults we have now. It's something they don't want to admit that they can't do.”

Odds are you know someone struggling with the sinking, frustrating feeling that their body is falling apart. Getting just a taste of what that’s like, said Strickland, goes a long way in empathizing with the old man yelling at the bananas in the grocery store. Because, she said, you’ll be there someday soon, likely yelling at your favourite fruit.

“It demonstrates sort of the inability that can come from these losses and just the everyday things we might not think about,” explained Strickland.

She added: “We’ve always said things like ‘the grumpy old man’ but it's about getting to understand why they might have these feelings. Older adults are experiencing depression and we're not talking about it.”

Strickland will present the kits to her company’s 60 caregivers and is also looking at getting the senior sensory kits into Port Coquitlam's Astoria and Mayfair Terrace retirement residences, so nurses and anyone else there can give them a try.

“Also the community in general,” she added. “It's just about getting the community that awareness.”

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