By John Lundy

Duluth News Tribune

DULUTH (AP) — Superior native Stanley Keller has lived in a Park Point nursing home for 21 of his 57 years, but he hasn’t forgotten his favorite football team.

Keller’s room at Ecumen Bayshore Health Center is decorated with every imaginable Green Bay Packers keepsake. He wears a Packers jersey and parks his wheelchair under a Packers-fans-only sign in a second-floor hallway of the nursing home.

Keller has Huntington’s disease, a brain disorder with a range of symptoms including dementia. And he’s part of a pilot program in the Ecumen system designed to give him a little less medication and a lot more personal attention.

On a recent afternoon at Bayshore, Keller was getting face time with Tom Cline, a “restorative aide.” He grinned from ear to ear as Cline gently massaged his hands with lotion and then held up a hand for him to kick.

The program is Awakenings, now in use at 15 nursing homes owned by Ecumen, a Twin Cities-based nonprofit. The idea is to wean residents, especially those with dementia, off nonessential drugs that might be robbing them of their personalities and harming them physically.

Keller takes a daily dose of haldol, an antipsychotic drug. Before Awakenings was implemented four months ago, Keller was given additional doses “as needed” when “out-of-character” behaviors occurred.

Now, if those episodes occur, Bayshore responds with human help.

“It’s about enhancing quality of life,” said Maria Alseth, a registered nurse who is Awakenings project leader at Bayshore. “When you take medications that could sedate, that could take away your functional abilities and your ability to interact with your environment, you’re decreasing the quality of life that the client may have otherwise.”

Laurel Baxter, who directs Awakenings for the Ecumen system, said use of psychotropic medications is similar to the abandoned practice of using physical restraints.

“If you see a person, be it a resident or even one of your family members, and they’re agitated and they’re upset, it’s easy in our society to look at giving a pill to treat something,” Baxter said.

Bayshore resident Patricia Lagine used to shuffle her feet when she walked.

“When I’d take her out I thought she was going to trip, because she couldn’t pick her feet up,” Florence Lapcinski said of Lagine, her sister.

Lagine, who is 61 and has dementia, can walk normally again — because she’s taking less medicine.

Awakenings began on a small scale at Ecumen Scenic Shores Care Center in Two Harbors with Eva Lanigan, then the resident care coordinator. Lanigan said she came back from a seminar in 2009 with a question: “How can we provide residents with behavioral interventions and modifications instead of medicating them?”

Officials and staff at Scenic Shores were open to a new approach, said Lanigan, who is now director of nursing. “We found that when we took away the medications and implemented exercise and activities . that worked well,” she said. “We saw a large increase in their quality of life and a decrease in their medications, and we let their personalities come out.”

Scenic Shores became a noisier, livelier place, Lanigan said.

Ecumen officials took notice. So did the Minnesota Department of Human Services, which OK’d a $3.8 million, two-year grant to expand it to Ecumen facilities that use Medicaid funding.