May 18, 2020
“Good morning, it’s time to get up Robert.” Robert opened his eyes and didn’t know where he was or how he got there. The woman standing over the bed was a stranger. She gently shakes his arm and smiling says, “Come on wake up.” He wondered, “Am I dreaming?” Robert tried to speak but came to an empty place in his mind; the words weren’t there. The
May 17, 2020
Seeing a person with later dementia can create feelings of sadness, especially when they are residents in nursing homes. Within closed dementia wards, people in later stages are usually seen in chairs slumped over, staring into space with their mouths hanging open or asleep. Their ability to speak has often been reduced to guttural sounds and they’re seemingly unaware of anything around them. In those beginning months
May 16, 2020
It’s early morning and Louise found herself sitting at the breakfast table. She’s very hungry yet when someone puts a plate in front of her, she didn’t recognize what it was. “What’s this?” she asks. The person who brought it replied, “Aren’t you hungry? Go ahead try and eat some” then puts the fork in her hand. Louise thinks, “What does she want me to do…What’s eat?
May 15, 2020
In caregiver terminology the person with dementia is called the “loved one”. But what exactly is love and how much of it is a family caregiver capable of feeling and giving when the ongoing challenges of 24/7 care have depleted them to exhaustion? The dictionary defines love as a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person. It seems simple enough but who can constantly feel
May 14, 2020
When you have dementia, you want to communicate but you lose not only words but commonly forget what you want to say in the middle of trying to say it. The ability to recognize and express yourself gets muddled up in fractured thoughts floating in and out of your mind. Sometimes you know what you want to say but when it comes out of your mouth the
May 4, 2020
Collage Conversations during Dementia Magazine pictures and collage making are effective tools for communicating with people with dementia even in later non-verbal stages. Years ago, a small nursing home hired me to create an all-inclusive art activity; the majority of the residents had dementia and couldn’t do art. Mixed media collage has been my passion for years so I created a collage activity with families acting as
May 3, 2020
I recently posted on FB about reliving past trauma during dementia. There was a considerable response from people with dementia explaining personal experiences and caregivers, both family and facility personal, relating stories of how the person with dementia relived episodes of trauma from their past or was stuck repeating one. Reliving isn’t remembering. While they are in the middle of the experience it is real to them
