KATYA’S BLOG

DEMENTIA INSIGHTS

CREATIVE STORYTELLING It’s pretty standard for a person with dementia to have delusional beliefs. They think their parents are still alive; they may want to get ready for work, find their child, or most frequently, ask to go home and drive the car. Usually, the caregiver or family tried to reason with them; “Mom, your parents died 30 years ago…“You are home…you don’t drive anymore.” What should

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LOSS OF IMAGINATION DURING DEMENTIA

Did you know our brain doesn’t know the difference between what it imagines and what it remembers? Our brain produces and releases various neurochemicals that combine in a soup and send messages to the neurons. Some of these we know, like endorphins and serotonin, are the feel-good ones. Every emotion results from a mix of neurochemical interactions, and our thoughts and memories cause the brain to produce

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“The Father” Love Hated the Movie

I watched this movie with great expectations it would bring awareness to dementia. It was an incredible depiction of the descent into dementia and how it affects everyone. Anthony Hopkins was brilliant in the role, and yes, it accurately depicted dementia breaks with reality. But it was the end that really got me angry. Don’t get me wrong, in so many ways, this movie does live up

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DEMENTIA & WORDS

Dementia has a variety of symptoms but the most common is forgetting and losing words. What are words, what is their purpose and what happens when we lose them. Words are a human construct which depict something. (House, train, running, talking). Every language uses words to communicate. However, words are not our first language. Before we understood the meaning of words, we thought in images. When the

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Lost in the Story

While caring for a loved one its common for unresolved issues from your shared past to surface and trigger your emotions. This can cause an overreaction to the situation at hand. Everyone has a story; actually, thousands of them have accumulated over one’s lifetime. The majority of these past stories are forgotten but yet they subconsciously continue to exist. Our ability to consciously recall a story is

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COMMUNICATION GONE HAYWIRE

The brain of a person with dementia loses information and words, and their connections to both become haywire. This can create recurring obsessional behavior or give rise to repetitive delusional beliefs. Both are commonly a need to communicate something. One woman was obsessed with wanting to know about Princess Diana’s death. She drove her daughter crazy with repeated questions about how she died, when, and why. Subconsciously

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EMPTY SHELL

This story was recently shared. My MIL had Alzheimer’s and for 15 or more years she had not recognized any of her children… or anyone else. She was 78 yrs. old and had fallen and broke her hip, so she had gone to the hospital. They did her surgery and sent her to a Rehab. My husband (her son) and I had gone to see her, she

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