Deena loved to garden. I love a pretty garden, but gardening itself, not so much. We had a landscape maintenance company that came once a month to do the heavy lifting. That left the maintenance of the flowerpots to Deena, which was just enough gardening to make her feel productive and useful. As Deena’s disease…
DAY TO DAY CHANGES DUE TO ALZHEIMER’S
As a caregiver, managing and adjusting to the changes that occur for a person with dementia, such as Alzheimer’s, can sometimes feel like a full-time job. Just when you think you’ve learned to accommodate one change, another change pops up. And, in a person with dementia, change is inevitable. The type and speed of the…
INTRUSION ERRORS
Early in our journey, I noticed that Deena and I had very different recall about some specific experiences. I would remember an interaction with someone one way and Deena would have a completely different version of the same interaction. She was so convinced that her version was correct that there was no way to have…
CAREGIVING: AN EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER
I started writing about our dementia journey on the day after Deena was diagnosed in June, 2017. I’d never journaled before. I’m not even sure what made me think to start on that day. Maybe I thought that documenting the events of the journey would help me learn what worked and what didn’t work. Maybe I knew somewhere deep…
ALZHEIMER’S AND SELF ESTEEM
Self-esteem is a measure of how you feel about yourself. Do you feel strong, competent, confident? Or weak, incapable, insecure? Does your life build your self-esteem up? Or tear it down? I think we all struggle with our feelings of self-esteem at some point in our lives. Remember that awkward transitional phase of your life when you were in junior…
WITH ALZHEIMER’S, CHANGE HAPPENS
Face it, change is hard. We like things to be the way we know them to be. Change forces us to be flexible, view the world differently, behave differently. It’s definitely hard. And change is definitely a part of a caregiver’s world. Change in the context of a person’s dementia is a strange concept. It can happen fast…in the blink…