Minding Our Elders®

Helping Grandchildren Understand Grandparent's Dementia

Children can be frightened by the changes in the grandparent who was once gentle and loving, but could now have become cranky and occasionally downright mean and abusive. How we, as parents, handle the changes in our own parents can affect how well our children handle the changes. But each child is different and each set of circumstances is different. So where to you start when it's time to explain?

Read more about how to help grandchildren understand changes in grandparents:

 

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Speak Respectfully to Cognitively Impaired Parent

Not All Caregivers Care for "Loved One"

Siblings Disagree About Mom Seeking Dementia Evaluation

Dear Carol: My sister Jean has wanted our mom to see a doctor about memory issues for months but Mom says she’s fine. Jean lives out of town, so she set aside a day to come into town and take Mom to lunch and get Mom’s hair cut. Then, Jean sprung a doctor appointment on Mom and, not surprisingly, Mom refused to go. She and Jean had a fight. I took Mom’s side which probably didn’t help matters. Mom already sees her doctor for osteoporosis and severe arthritis, but she won’t take memory tests even though her memory is slipping a lot. She also has some confusion.

Read more about sibling disagreement about Mom:

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Redefining Life After the Death of a Care Receiver

Many of us start our caregiving career by assisting an elder in his or her home, or we have a spouse who declines and we become the default caregiver in our own home. This care expands to a point where we need some type of respite, often in the form of in-home care agency help. Eventually, the move to assisted living or even a nursing home may become necessary for everyone's health and wellbeing. Whatever happens, we remain caregivers. Many of us continue to see our care receiver daily. Most of us continue to be involved as advocates and support throughout the time of need. When our loving attention and care is no longer needed, we can, indeed, feel lost.

Read more about rebuilding your life after your care receiver dies:

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What Makes You a Caregiver?

Do You Regret Placing Your Parent In a Nursing Home?

...Of course, we don't always make the right call regarding every circumstance. But we do our best. I'd hazard a guess that the most painful decision for most of us to make is whether or not it's in our loved one's best interests to place him or her in a nursing home. If it is also in our best interest, then the guilt looms even larger.

Read more about regrets:

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Husband Won't Accept Wife's Help Caring for His Mom

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Is It Wise To Quit a Job to Be a Caregiver?

You already know what may be gained by giving up employment and becoming the sole caregiver for your parents. You are the hands-on person and know their care intimately. You know how they are doing day and night and you hope they will appreciate your help. They raised you and you want to give back.

Read more about quitting a paying job to care for your parents:

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Caring for Multiple Elders Especially Challenging

Many people are trying to care for two or more elders in varying locations, with each elder needing significant care. It's a situation that I know well. During my busiest eldercare years, I was the primary caregiver for five elders in three different living situations. I continually struggled to compassionately and efficiently divide my time in a way the best covered their needs.

Read more about caring for more than one elder:

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Elders Sleeping All Day: What's the Deal?

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Bilingual people may be better protected against Alzheimer's

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Choosing a Care Facility? Listen To Your Gut

People often ask what to look for when choosing an assisted living facility or a nursing home for a loved one. There are grading sites such as the Medicare Nursing Home Guide, found on Medicare.gov, and I suggest you use them. However, there are many things that go into good care that can’t be measured on a chart. In order to see the heart of a facility, you need to spend some time there. Observe routines and pay attention to the atmosphere. What is your gut feeling about the place?

Read more about choosing a quality care facility:

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How Involved Should Family Be In Your Elder's Senior Living?

Husband Won't Accept Wife's Help Caring for His Mom

Torn Between Children and Eldercare

Dear Carol: My mother, who is in her early 70s, suffers from advanced multiple sclerosis. She lives with me, my husband of three years, and my step daughter. Mom’s mentally fine, but physically she needs a lot of care which includes lifting and continence issues. I’m 37 years old and would really like to have a baby. My husband would, too, but he is afraid that I can’t handle a pregnancy and second child as well as care for mom and our daughter. We need my income from my part-time job, so quitting that isn’t an option.

Read more about the struggle about caregiving:

 

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Loving and Understanding Our Imperfect Mothers

...We need to understand, love and forgive ourselves for our perceived imperfections as mothers. And yes, we need to try to understand, love and forgive our mothers for what may have been less than perfect mothering practices. Perfection is hard to define and resides in the eye of the beholder, so it's a subjective idea, anyway.

Read about understanding our imperfect mothers:

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Should Siblings Split the Cost of Parent Care?

...So, who helps with the cost? Many people think Medicare will help with these costs. Medicare does not generally pay for assisted living, though some states have programs where seniors who qualify can choose how to spend the money allotted to them through some hybrid programs involving Medicare.

Read more about how siblings may share the cost of assisted living for their parents:

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Know Your Hospitalization Codes or Risk Medicare Denial

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Keeping Up With Friendships Can Be Hard for Caregivers

...In situations where an aging parent lives with the caregiver, friends can feel like they are intruders. Also, they may feel uncomfortable because they don't know how to act when an ailing elder, especially an elder who is cognitively compromised, is present. In any event, the resident parent is often seen as a barrier to the intimacy of "old times," and friends may stop coming around.

Read about what can happen to friendships wehn you become a caregiver:

 

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Elders Covering for Each Other Can Hide Dementia Symptoms

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Not Every Adult Child Can Be a Caregiver

Dear Carol: I feel guilty because I don’t want be a caregiver for my elderly mother. I’m an only child, and since my father died she’s come to rely on me more than she needs to. She’s healthy and has plenty of money. She has friends, though she seems to prefer leaning on me. She was controlling and emotionally abusive when I was growing up, so we don’t have a great relationship, but I’m willing to help her out, and naturally I am on call for emergencies. I just don’t want to become her sole caregiver.

Read more about feeling resistance to becoming a caregiver:

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Going Public with an Alzheimer’s Diagnosis

Sadly, even after years of work to educate the public about any illness that affects the brain, a stigma remains. No matter that most if not all mental illnesses have some biological basis. No matter that people aren’t any more responsible for a brain illness than they are for other bodily illnesses. Whether the illness that affects the brain occurs at a younger age in the form of depression or bi-polar disease or an older age in the form of Alzheimer’s disease, people with brain illnesses are often reluctant to acknowledge their illness for fear of being treated differently than others.

Read more about the stigma of Alzheimer's and other brain diseases:

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How Involved Should Family Be In Your Elder's Senior Living?

...The nursing home staff would occasionally confide in me about families who "took over" the nursing home. The families came on like they owned the facility and their loved one was the only person who mattered. They cornered every staff member they could find and talked to them either with the attitude of a good neighbor who had all the time in the world, or as an adversary who needed constant monitoring. Neither attitude is good.

Read more about how involved families should be in facility care:

 

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Making Caregiving a Team Effort

...During my years of caregiving, one incident in particular made me realize that in order for caregivers to keep their sanity, they have to eliminate that "I" by building a support team. What happened that led to my epiphany?

Read about building a caregiving team to help everyone get by more easily:

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Option of Hospice Care Freeing for Many

People who read my work on a regular basis know that I am grateful to hospice for the care of both of my parents. Without the skilled, compassionate care of the hospice staff, both of my parents would have suffered far more than they did. As it was, they’d both had long, slow declines and pain had become the focus of their days even though they received excellent care in the nursing home. When Dad and Mom qualified for hospice care, meaning that their physician considered their conditions terminal, I filled out the paperwork for each of them.

Read more about hospice and what they do:

 

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Caregiver's Often Use Humor to Survive

...Though we may be emotionally shredded by the changes in our loved ones' physical and often mental health, we soldier on daily trying to help them maintain some quality in their lives. This can drain us of energy and devour our time to where we have little left to give to our friends, so those who don't understand the challenges caregivers face often drift away.

Read more about using humor to get throught the challenges of caregiving:

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Humor Provides Armor Against Caregivers' Deepest Sorrows

What Makes You a Caregiver?

...Caregivers can get drawn into their own version of the "mommy wars" if they start to compare time spent in the presence of the care receiver to quality of care. We need to be careful to avoid nit picking and support each other as caregivers no matter what the differences in our situations may be.

Read about becoming a caregiver:

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Acceptance of Change Important in Alzheimer’s Caregiving

My dad went into surgery with a smile and hope. He came out with severe dementia. Something unexplainable at the time had happened and Dad became a statistic – one of those “poor outcomes” we hear about. My head knew this tragedy was permanent, but my heart wanted my “real” dad back. The kind, loving, intelligent man whose love for me was steadfast. I wanted him back. Unfortunately, my family and I had to learn to accept the fact that Dad would never be the same.

Read more about accepting change so we can help our loved ones:

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Lewy Body Dementia Often Confused With Alzheimer’s

When most people think of dementia they probably think of Alzheimer’s disease. Since Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, and one of the biggest risk factors for developing AD is age, new developments to combat the disease are often in the news.

There are, however, other types of dementia that are just as devastating as Alzheimer’s disease and they are not necessarily rare. The dementia we’ll focus on in this article is Lewy body dementia. I frequently hear from spouses or adult children of people who have developed LBD. It saddens me that there’s little news to relate to them about research to combat the disease.

Read more about Lewy body dementia:

 

 

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