After an Alzheimer’s Diagnosis a Former Teacher Finds New Students and New Purpose
Guest Contributor
In a quiet Wisconsin community, people living with early-stage Alzheimer’s and dementia are helping shape the future of health care. Through a semester-long initiative called the New Friends program, mentors with mild cognitive impairment are paired with University of Wisconsin-Madison students who are preparing for careers as nurses, doctors, therapists and social workers. The result is a rare learning space where textbook knowledge meets real life, and where dementia care becomes personal instead of abstract. Programs like this are increasingly important as Wisconsin’s population ages and the need for dementia-informed elder care grows.
The story of Bill and Diana Ducett captures how this looks in everyday life. Bill, a 78-year-old with an exceptional sense of direction and decades of life experience, first noticed something was wrong when he accidentally drove his friends in the opposite direction of a Chicago conference. For someone who knew the city intimately, the mistake was unsettling. Diana, a nurse, noticed too. After hours of evaluation, doctors diagnosed Bill with mild cognitive impairment and sent him home with a GPS. It was a small adjustment on paper, but for the couple it marked the beginning of a new chapter.
Instead of retreating from the world, Bill chose to engage. For three years he has met regularly with UW-Madison medical students through New Friends to talk about what it is like to live with an early-stage Alzheimer’s diagnosis. He calls it a way to be “productive” and to give back, although he says that in giving back he receives many benefits himself. The author reports that Bill has mentored eight students over that period, and that the experience has allowed him to step back into a familiar role from his past as a teacher and professor. Being around young adults again feels natural to him, and he treats the meetings as a chance to teach.
New Friends began in 2012 with modest aims and has grown significantly since, with more than 300 students now having taken part. Each mentor is typically paired with two students, and an education coordinator carefully matches them based on shared interests and backgrounds. What unfolds from there is flexible. Some pairs simply sit and talk at a kitchen table. Others meet in coffee shops, parks or museums. Some go bowling, play board games or watch sports. Bill and Diana have painted pottery and attended school plays directed by their son, turning the program into a bridge between generations and communities.
These seemingly simple outings are powerful educational experiences. Students are asked to handle real-world logistics that many may not have considered before. They think about transportation, accessible parking, comfortable seating and whether a restaurant or event might be too loud or overstimulating. Program leaders note that this is an important lesson in how differently abled people navigate the world, from the time it takes to move through a space to the subtle barriers that can make daily life more complicated. It is training in empathy that no lecture can fully replicate.
All mentors in New Friends are in the early stages of dementia, before communication becomes significantly impaired and before assisted living is usually necessary. At this point many can still live independently, work, socialize and participate actively in family life. Program staff describe how the middle and later stages of dementia are very different and can be more emotionally distressing, which is why New Friends focuses on the time when individuals can clearly share their experiences. I found this detail striking because it challenges the most common images associated with dementia, which so often focus on advanced decline.
That challenge to stigma is one of the program’s most important contributions. When Bill began telling neighbors and friends about his diagnosis, he felt a noticeable distance grow. People were sympathetic yet unsure how to respond, and some seemed to pull away. Diana observed that many individuals simply do not know what to say and fear saying the wrong thing. In contrast, the students in New Friends come to each meeting with open curiosity. They ask about daily routines, about what has changed and what has stayed the same, and about how Bill and Diana navigate medical care and family conversations.
For Bill, the symptoms at this stage are relatively small. He may forget that he already poured a cup of coffee, or momentarily lose track of his sense of direction. He still drives, attends his son’s plays and continues to participate in everyday life. Program staff emphasize that this is true for many people in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and dementia. Yet media portrayals frequently jump straight to images of late-stage disease, such as residents in wheelchairs sitting in front of televisions in nursing homes. The gap between those portrayals and the lived experience of early-stage dementia can lead to fear, misunderstanding and premature assumptions about what someone can or cannot do.
New Friends works to close that gap, both through conversation and through structured reflection. Students are asked to keep journals throughout the semester and to complete surveys at the beginning and end of the program. One question asks how comfortable they feel sitting one-on-one with a person living with dementia. By the end of the term, program leaders report that students’ perceptions and comfort levels have grown more positive and nuanced. They begin to see their mentors not as diagnoses but as individuals with histories, preferences and ongoing contributions to make.
Former participant Meghana Ram illustrates how transformative this can be for someone already working in health care. She had worked as a certified nursing assistant in an assisted living facility during high school, where she encountered many residents with dementia and often felt unsure how best to connect. She joined New Friends in college specifically to improve her communication skills. Over a year of outings that included arcade visits and meals out, she asked her mentors about how they reacted to their diagnoses, how they told their families and how their social worlds changed. Through these conversations she came to appreciate how much each person’s experience of dementia differs and how deeply individualized care must be.
Ram later created a smaller version of the program in Green Bay in partnership with a local support organization for adults with cognitive issues. Although that initiative paused when she moved to Wausau to continue her education as a physician assistant, she hopes to revive something similar in the future. Her reflections highlight another quiet strength of New Friends. Even students who do not specialize in dementia care carry forward better communication skills and greater empathy into any setting where they might interact with people living with cognitive changes. Program leaders note that this could be anywhere from a clinic or hospital to a grocery store, bank or restaurant.
Perhaps the most enduring outcome is the sense of genuine friendship that often forms. Many mentor-student pairs stay in touch beyond the semester, exchanging photos and life updates. Bill and Diana follow their students’ paths after graduation and continue to welcome new pairs each term. They say that these young people have enriched their lives and given them reasons to look ahead with anticipation. In return, students step into their own futures better prepared to see the person behind the diagnosis and to support individuals with dementia in ways that are grounded in respect, understanding and shared humanity.