Wes Mika started out on drums, but in his heart, he was a tambourine man.
“He got fascinated by the little silver discs on the tambourine,” said his wife, Susan Mika. “Sometimes he would hit the tambourine with the little mallets of the drum. He just loved that tambourine.”
Wes, 77, has dementia and lives in a memory care facility in Arlington Heights, Illinois, a northwest suburb of Chicago. He and Susan, 76, participated in a music program designed to help dementia patients connect with their loved ones.
The program, Musical Bridges to Memory, has been shown to enhance patients’ ability to non-verbally interact with their caregivers, according to a study published recently in the journal Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders….