Dementia’s progress isn’t linear nor is it predictable. People living with dementia don’t start forgetting people in the order of “not significant in my life” to “has always been my favorite although I’d never admit it.” People with dementia don’t forget loved ones because they are mad at them. REPEAT THAT TO YOURSELF. Continue reading The Forgetting and the Remembering and the Forgetting
Hi friends! Just a bit of a blog update. You can now find me online at WhenDementiaKnocks.com. Tell your friends. In addition, I started a Facebook page with the title When Dementia Knocks. This is a place to post my blog as well as provide some other dementia resources. If you’re a Facebook person and you feel compelled to “like” the page, you can find … Continue reading When Dementia Knocks: Update
If it wasn’t a big deal, why was she telling me about it? She said that having to cancel lunch with a friend because her husband (who was living with Alzheimer’s) was having awful anxiety was no big deal. She said that her friend could stop by later. That she wasn’t that thrilled with the restaurant (Olive Garden) her friend picked anyway. That she had … Continue reading Hey Dementia Community: Stop Telling Me Your Challenges Aren’t a Big Deal!
Anticipatory grief. I first learned the term when I was in graduate school. I threw it around a lot when I was volunteering for hospice. Now that I work with families impacted with dementia I apply the term frequently. It could be described as the emotional response to the pending death of a loved one–but I know people who have a loved one with dementia … Continue reading Anticipatory Grief and Dementia
A guy once told me he never knew how much his wife accomplished in a day until she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and was unable to do what she had done for the previous thirty years. He told me that picking up the slack was a big challenge for him.
“Dementia doubled my chores,” one woman told me.
Stop. Take a second right now. Pat yourself on the back for the added responsibilities that you’ve mastered. Continue reading Love and Renovations in Dementialand (aka This One is For the Dementia Spouses)
I get a lot of gifts from people with dementia. And I’m not talking about abstract and intangible gifts. I’m talking about actual stuff.
Sometimes they are gifts “stolen” from another resident at a memory care community. Sometimes they are pulled directly from a dirty clothes hamper. Sometimes they are things that aren’t really useful to me–like a used lipstick.
I have been given family heirlooms only to return them to family members at a later date. People have insisted I accept horse figurines, gently used toothbrushes, expensive and inexpensive jewelry, cat beds, and rocks. People color me pictures. Once someone gave me a photo of their grandbaby so I “wouldn’t forget what babies look like since no one has them nowadays.” Continue reading Dementia and the Gift
If you’re a caregiver, I hope that your mistakes are small and fixable (and maybe that your loved one with dementia forgets about them). And I hope that you move on quickly because guilt and self-blame are a waste of time. Continue reading So You Messed Up in Dementialand
It’s true that things can always be worse, but attempting to point out how they could be worse to a person in the midst of crisis is not helpful.
The next time you try to find the right words, make sure those words don’t start with “At least.”
Don’t focus on putting a silver lining on dementia. Maybe they’ll somehow find that silver lining in the midst of the tsunami, but it’s not for you to put it there.
To support people, you gotta meet them where they are in the moment. And trying to throw a little glitter into the conversation sometimes puts you on a different planet than the one they are currently inhabiting. Continue reading Why You Shouldn’t Start Statements with “At Least” in Dementialand (And Elsewhere)
I have a friend named Drew Dotson. She lives in Atlanta and performs at an improv comedy theater. Not only does she perform improv (and does so amazingly well), she teaches improv. If you’re not familiar with improv, think of Whose Line is it Anyway, only the Drew I’m talking about is more impressive than Drew Carey. Drew also has a family member with dementia. It … Continue reading Improv and Dementialand (aka There Are No Scripts in Dementialand)
A woman explained to me that her mother, who has Lewy-Body dementia, had forgotten how much she loved Jesus. Ella, as I will call her, had always gone to a Baptist church. She wasn’t pushy or overbearing about religion, but it was important to her. She was well-respected at her church for her willingness to prepare food for funerals and help with gardening on the church … Continue reading Jesus, Faith, and Coping in Dementialand
When Dementia Knocks 
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