Having a full-time job is stressful. Having two is double the challenge — especially when you are not been paid for one of those roles.

But Elizabeth Stewart refuses to grumble or dedicate less time to her second career of running the Action on Alzheimer’s and Dementia (AAD) charity.

She launched the non-profit to help support people with the condition and their families after struggling to get information or assistance when her late mother developed Alzheimer’s.

Ms Stewart, a senior vice-president in Markel Global Insurance’s excess liability unit, discovered there were no resources on the Island and she was left hunting for answers in a “landscape of nothingness”.

“When mum got diagnosed here in 2004 there was nobody based here, the doctor flew in and out about once a month and saw a bunch of people,” she said. “There were no other resources, nobody to guide you, no access to information.

“Thank God for the worldwide web, I read and educated myself.

“There was nothing really out there for people. The Alzheimer’s Family Support Group meet once a month at the hospital but so much more needed to be done.

“I realised a lot of people needed something to be done and someone’s got to do it, so I did.

“I quickly came across people in the same situation and now there are probably 80 families on the mailing list.

“It shows the great need and we help a lot of people.”

Ms Stewart’s fact-finding mission to help her mother soon grew into a determination to help other families in the same situation — and AAD officially launched in March, 2012.

Her mother, Judith, passed away two months later in May.

“I could easily have said, she’s passed away, I’ll move on,” Ms Stewart said. “But I really wanted to carry on with the charity.

“I didn’t want anyone else to go through what we went through.

“I guess I get it from Mum — she launched Project Action with Cindy Swan to help seniors go on visits and trips.

“Mum was a music teacher, she used to go to what was St George’s Residential Home and play piano and sing to the residents. She realised how some people were stuck in care homes and didn’t get out.”

Ms Stewart said her mum showed classic symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

“Mum became forgetful, withdrawn from social stuff,” she said. “It was very unlike her.

“She worried about driving into town — I’d have to meet her to park her bike, she’d be panicking.

“There were lots of different things, like repeating herself and having difficulty with cooking and general day-to-day activities.”

Ms Stewart now devotes “hours and hours” to AAD — but does not regret a moment.

“I spend a lot of evenings and weekends on it,” she said. “I do the financials and the banking as well as sending out e-mails, taking calls, attending support group meetings — it’s a full-time job. I don’t have much down time.

“We don’t ask for Government support, we do fundraisers and have good corporate support — we’re very self-reliant and I want to be.

“I take a lot of vacation time to do stuff with the charity — I was off last week for Dementia Awareness Week.

“But when someone says how much we’ve helped, and that they don’t know what they would’ve done without us, it’s all worthwhile.”

Dementia Awareness Week was organised by AAD and was the Island’s first series of events dedicated to educating the public about Alzheimer’s and Dementia.

Two movie screenings sold out, and a free public presentation was “80 percent full”.

“We had a very good response,” Ms Stewart said. “There’s a massive need in the community. In the past dementia has been hidden behind closed doors and dealt with in the home, nobody talked about it.

“Dementia is a disease, it’s not a natural part of ageing.

“There’s no direct link between health and Alzheimer’s, there are no hard facts to say that. Healthy people get Alzheimer’s too.

“Vascular dementia is more linked to a healthy lifestyle — it can be caused by a stroke. But you should always try to be healthy to prevent any condition.”

As well as raising awareness, the charity also tries to help families find qualified care givers.

They also run therapy activities — such as music, art and puppetry — for people with dementia three days a week — two at Windreach and one at Peace Lutheran Church — and hire a freelance occupational therapist, Marie Fay, who works with those with dementia, their families and private carers. She also trains staff in care homes about looking after those living with dementia.

“We’ve seen how much people benefit from the therapy sessions how much people need it, how much families need it,” Ms Stewart said.

“We get between nine and 15 at each session, they come with their caregiver or family member. We don’t want them to be dropped off and left alone as it can be distressing for them, but if a family has no choice but to leave them they can ask us and we’ll try to get a volunteer.

“Trying to figure out caregivers is so difficult. If you can’t afford a care giver, we’ve helped in that regard.

“We have limited resources but we certainly don’t want to see people left in dangerous situations or without care if that’s what they need.

“Financial assistance is very difficult to get, especially if a family wants to keep the person at home — you get more financial assistance if you put them in a care home.

“But it’s so much more disruptive to put them in a home. You really need to have one-on-one care. From what I went through with Mum, good care needs to be one-on-one.

“A person really can’t be left alone, they get anxious. There’s a lot of stress for them, they need a lot of attention.”

Ms Stewart believes the lack of staff qualified to care for dementia patients in care homes is a “big problem” that must be addressed.

“There is going to be a lot of people in care homes with dementia — there’s an ageing population,” she said. “We need regulations to be enforced for homes and a Dementia Plan for Bermuda.

“We don’t have the financial infrastructure to support this, there aren’t enough care homes and pensions are in difficulty.

“But we are such a small Island, we should be able to manage.

“We assist families with the process of finding a care home and have brought in trainers from the UK to do dementia-specific training with those working in the care industry.

“That was the first thing I wanted to do, there was an immediate need.

“Home staff had little to no dementia-specific training at the time, so I wanted to make sure care staff were able to support and understand who they are looking after — it’s very specific way to look after someone, like with cancer or diabetes.”

Going forward, Ms Stewart is keen to focus on educating the public about Alzheimer’s and Dementia, helping even more families in need and training care home staff.

Efforts to do more include revamping the Board so she now has “good support from the four other Board members, who are all volunteers as well”.

Ms Stewart is also focused on fundraising and raises awareness for the charity by competing in sports events wearing a trisuit bearing the AAD logo.

She took part in last Sunday’s Bank of Bermuda Triathlon in St George’s and the Argo Supersprint on September 4. Her next challenge is the Half Ironman 70.3 in Miami on October 26.

“I’m trying to raise money for the charity,” Ms Stewart said. “Everybody should give back in some way to society.

“If people want to volunteer I would say contact a local care home and go to visit someone who doesn’t have anyone.

“A lot of people don’t have anybody, that’s scary.”

For more information about AAD or to assist Ms Stewart’s fundraising efforts, visit www.alzbermuda.com or e-mail alzbermuda@yahoo.com

Do you know someone who is dedicated to making the Island a better place? Is there a good Samaritan who selflessly helps others? A volunteer working tirelessly for charity? E-mail lmcgrath@royalgazette.com or call 278-0157.