Andy Peck, M.D., wants us to see through the eyes of someone with Alzheimer’s disease.
So, the first-year anesthesiology resident asked people at long-
term care facilities to draw a clock set at 1:50, then arranged them on the wall to form a clock face and opened an exhibition, "10 till 2: Alzheimer’s in Omaha," at an artist’s cooperative gallery this past fall.
The drawings are shocking and powerful.
Few of the nearly 150 drawings show the correct time. Some don’t even resemble a clock.
Some are well-drawn mantle clocks or Rolex wristwatch faces. Others just have the numbers ‘150.’ Some have writing – one in a language Dr. Peck thinks is French.
Each offers a rare glimpse into the mind of someone with Alzheimer’s disease.
"Alzheimer’s is a long slow process. First a person forgets dates and events, then names. They become confused and withdrawn and eventually they have to be put in a care facility. It can tear a family apart deciding what to do," he said.
He knows. Over the past decade, he watched his grandfather, a dentist in Wisconsin, slowly depart.
"It’s a loss of someone who still lives with you."
Dr. Peck was stunned when, in medical school, he saw one of the clock drawings his grandfather had done. "It was very distorted, abstract. I didn’t think he was that far along."
Dr. Peck began his clock project last spring – one week after his grandfather died.
Clock drawing has become a practical test that clinicians use to screen for cognitive impairment in old age and as a marker to detect dementia or Alzheimer’s. "I don’t think there’s a neurologist that doesn’t use it," he said.
In each clock, you can see the chaos of the mind. "There are stories behind these drawings. I can still see some of them being drawn," he said. "Each piece has power in the space the clocks take on the paper, and the lines, like the Salvador Dali piece, "The Persistence of Memory."
And, on the back of one drawing, a spouse reminds us all:
"The hands of time are wound but once, and no one has the power to know just when the hands may stop. Not the day or the hour, so live it with a will because one day the hands stop!"