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?
...My mom was a supreme example. She fell in her apartment—often more than
once a week. She had memory problems. She was taken advantage of by
telemarketers. She had digestive issues. However, when I took her to her
doctor, what I called her "hostess personality" took over. While she
may have complained of pain in the car during our drive, the minute she
had a chance to tell her doctor how terrible she felt she was perkiness
personified.
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.
...The death of a parent
is tough, whether it's sudden or a long time coming. The advantage of a
slower death is that there may have been more time to prepare, however
human nature being what is, often people don't use that time well. Of
course, a sudden death can throw everyone back by the very nature of the
shock. Either way, unless there is a solid reason to do otherwise, it's
generally unwise to make changes too quickly, if they can't easily be
undone.
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.
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?
Dear Readers: Like
most of us, I grew up hearing that it’s the little things that count. I’m becoming
increasingly aware of the truth in the old adage. As I look back this Mother’s
Day on my mom’s last year of life, I remember how important the smallest things
became to her as time went by.
Because of frequent falls and other health problems, Mom
spent many years in a nursing home. Dad also made his home there after surgery
catapulted him into instant dementia. At least they were together. The facility
was just a couple of blocks from where I lived, so I was able to see both
parents nearly every day. My sister, whose home was about 50 miles away, would
come to town nearly every weekend to see our parents, and a few long-time
friends visited frequently.
Our culture has historically been devoted to cure illness at all costs,
and death is often looked at as "failure," no matter the age or
condition of the person being treated. Many other cultures readily
accept death as part of the life cycle. I believe we, as a culture, are
making progress in this direction, but death still tends to be a word
people avoid. If it's up to you to inform a loved one that he or she
would be more comfortable under hospice care – or that a person they
love will be on hospice care – there are steps you can take to get you
through this difficult transition.
...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.
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.
...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.
...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?
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.
Dear Carol: I’m
worried about my mom. She’s 89-years old and has very little appetite. At one
time she was quite heavy and ate as much as my dad, but now she says just looking
at food fills her up. She’s in a good nursing home and she goes to their dining
room for three meals a day. They also offer snacks between meals. She’ll
sometimes eat the snacks, but she just picks at her main meals. Granted, the
meals are rather institutional, but they try to present them well and the
atmosphere is friendly. The nurses hate seeing Mom lose weight, too, and they
all encourage her to eat. Her health problems don’t explain this loss of
appetite. What more can we do? Robin
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.
Communicating with someone who has dementia can be an ever-changing
challenge. But some things never change. One of those constants is that
caregivers and friends must fully understand and accept that the person
with dementia is not a child any sense of the word. Dementia may have robbed our friends or loved ones of their ability
to understand their own environment, follow a sequence of directions or
even understand how to use the toilet. These issues do not in any way
make these people less than adults and they should never be treated as
such.
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.
NOTE: I wrote this article in 2006 when I was quite
new at blogging. It occurred to me that many loyal readers won't have read this
article, and actually nothing about caregiving has significantly changed. We
are still in this together. Since the client for whom I wrote this post is still
one of my major clients (they are now called HealthCentral/Alzheimers), and they
pulled the post up to feature it again, I decided to follow suit. I hope you
enjoy it. Carol
"Torn between love and exhaustion; dedication and guilt."
These words, from the prologue of my caregiving support book, Minding Our Elders: Caregivers Share Their Personal Stories, sum up the emotions that rage through caregivers,
daily. We’re on alert – 24/7. We dread the calls that summon us to
emergency rooms or worse. There never seems to be a moment when we
aren’t worried about someone or something. We love the people we are
caring for, but we sometimes lose ourselves.
Over the course of
two decades, I cared for seven elders. I was raising my own children,
one of whom has chronic health issues. I was a freelance writer. I wrote
Minding Our Elders.
During my first go ‘round with agents,
I’d been told, by many, that they loved the book. They loved the
concept. But who was I? They couldn’t sell the book to a publisher,
because I wasn’t known.
For the most part, I’ve always been a “glass half full” person. Even
during very trying times, I try to find the good in what’s happening, or
at least contemplate what I can learn from the negative aspects of
life. After reading about a study done by Utah State University, I
realize that as a caregiver for multiple people, looking on the brighter
side of life may have helped my care receivers, as well.
Many people are reluctant to visit elders, whether they are in their
homes or a facility, mainly because they wonder what they’ll talk about.
While this reluctance is more of a worry if the elder has memory
problems from dementia, it’s often a problem even when memory isn’t an
issue.Since elders by definition have many decades of life to their credit,
they will likely enjoy looking back on the past. This is especially
important when people have Alzheimer’s disease, because their disease
prevents them from forming new memories. Nearly everyone enjoys
reminiscing to some degree.
It is especially important for seniors to get the right vitamins
and minerals, many seniors find it helpful to take a multivitamin.
Geritol Complete® multi-vitamin contains every vitamin and
mineral established as essential in nutrition, plus vitamins
A, C, and E in the antioxidant form.
