Age of Disruption Tour

DR. BILL THOMAS' AGE OF DISRUPTION TOUR

Presents

Disrupt Dementia 2:30 - 4:30 p.m.

Lobby Experience 4:30 - 5:30

Non-Fiction Theater - Life's Most Dangerous Game 7:00 - 8:30 p.m.

Tickets are $20.00 each for the 2:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. events and are available and are available only at: drbillthomas.org/local/madison-wi/

Additional information is available at: https://drbillthomas.org/

press release: Dr. Bill Thomas is a real-life revolutionary bringing his Age of Disruption Tour to Madison October 21. He is traveling the globe, gaining the support of people everywhere he goes, successfully producing radical changes in how we take care of ourselves as we approach the end phase of life. He is successfully challenging – even disrupting -- the long-accepted attitudes people hold about getting older. He is helping millions of people help themselves. His story is amazing.

In 1991, Dr. Thomas went from being an emergency room physician to the medical director of a nursing home in upstate New York. “The place was depressing, with old people parked in wheelchairs like frogs on a log, bored with nothing to do, just waiting for death to finally reach them. It was horrible,” Dr. Thomas recalls.

So he did the unthinkable. He persuaded the facility and staff to get two dogs, four cats, several hens and rabbits, and 100 parakeets, along with hundreds of plants, a vegetable and flower garden, and a day-care site for staffers’ kids. At the time, there were laws prohibiting animals in nursing homes. They went ahead anyway.

The results were astounding. Dr. Atal Gawande details in his recent best-selling book Being Mortal: The residents started caring for the plants and animals, and this restored their spirits and their interest in doing things. Many started taking better care of themselves, venturing out of their rooms and eating and interacting with people again. Prescription drug use was reduced 50 percent, particularly for drugs utilized to reduce anxiety and agitation. Medication costs plummeted, and so did the death rate.

Another result - New York and other states changed the law to allow animals in old age homes and facilities. And in some locations, trucks were hired to take away the accumulations of wheelchairs that were no longer being used.

Dr. Thomas’ actions evolved into what is now known as The Eden Alternative – a model that has been implemented in thousands of nursing homes, retirement facilities and home care agencies across the country and around the world. Dr. Thomas also founded The Green House model, a radical alternative to replace large nursing homes with smaller households that provide private rooms and bathrooms for up to 10 residents. The idea for both approaches is to make any care environment where people live into a real home with no trace of hospitalized trappings.

And now, Dr. Thomas is in the third year of a mission that carries him to communities across the continent. He is conducting a 30-city tour around North America. Dubbed the “Age of Disruption Tour,” Dr. Thomas is barnstorming the country in a rock n’ roll tour bus to rally communities like Madison around a new and highly disruptive understanding and approach to growth and aging.

The Age of Disruption Tour features two events at each stop: Disrupt Dementia, a paradigm shifting stage production, and Dr. Thomas’ signature “non-fiction theater” performance, Life’s Most Dangerous Game, featuring the unconventional pairing of a physician (Dr. Thomas) and a musician, Nate Silas Richardson.