Aging Care Coach

As I travel around the country speaking about dementia, I get to meet a lot of neat people and hear a lot of stories about caring for loved ones throughout the aging process and those living with dementia. I repeatedly hear accounts of husbands, wives, sons and daughters who tell of "sudden" changes in their loved ones which are mistakenly misdiagnosed as sudden onset dementia or sudden drastic progression of the dementia process. I had the recent misfortune to have little run in with a deer while driving on a major thoroughfare in my town... I could almost see the deer laugh at me as he ran off. Meanwhile, my husband's Jeep (which I was driving at the time) required over three thousand dollars in repairs. When I took the car to the collision center for repairs, I struck up small talk with a fellow customer. As conversations often evolve, the topic of careers came up and I shared that I work in dementia care. I noticed an immediate change in James' (my new f...

Alright friends, it is Real Talk Time again on the Aging Care Coach blog. Over the past 6 weeks, many of you have visited aging family members that you may or may not see regularly. In recent visits, there are a few bits and pieces of your interactions that have stuck out in your mind. For some of you, these are more alarming and you know that it is probably past time to get help. Some of you, however, are finding ways to “justify” these incidents as stress, normal aging or lifelong challenges with details, personality issues, etc. I’m not a mind-reader, I haven’t been spying on your texts with your siblings and I haven’t been a part of your whispered conversations with loved ones… so how do I know this? I know what many of you are experiencing right now because I have experienced this in my own family situations and have worked with families reaching out for support in late December, January and February for the past 15 years. During my Masters’ program, I had the privileg...

Friends, let's talk about giving gifts to loved ones living with dementia. Yet again, I speak from experience... I have seen my own family and others overcompensate in their grief and feelings of hopelessness by giving extravagantly at a point when the person living with dementia is unable to appreciate or secure treasured valuables. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think those living with dementia are un-deserving of nice things. That is not my point at all. Unfortunately, because of the memory and thinking changes experienced, some "valuables" may not be as meaningful to them as their world gets more narrow. If they do treasure an item, they may place the item in a 'safe place'... You know the safe place I'm talking about - the place where a person with dementia puts a treasured item then cannot recall the location? Yep, some of you know all about these 'safe places' where items go missing sometimes turning up months or years later. ...

“You want me to lie to my Dad?” Yes. Well, no not really. I like to consider it a therapeutic fib, rather than a “lie”. Some may consider it a lie. I don’t really care what we call it as long as it is done taking their brain changes in mind with the focus on what is most supportive for the person living with dementia.  Following a recent presentation on “Transitions Along the Journey of Dementia”, a participant came up to discuss her situation. She shared that her father, who is now living with moderate dementia, repeatedly asks about his parents. To date, she has explained that his parents are deceased. She went on to tell me that in order to disrupt the pattern of this repetitive question, earlier that day she had placed photographs of both of his parents’ grave stones on his dresser mirror. After hearing me talk about “joining the journey” rather than “reality orientation”, she asked me if I thought she should remove the pictures. I mustered as much compassion a...

Friends, I have to share a glimmer of hope with you. Over the past four months, I have had the opportunity to be an online mentor/coach for undergraduate students at Arizona State University taking an elective course on dementia. The course is taught by the amazing and brilliant Dr. Gillian Hamilton from Hospice of the Valley (HOV), a not-for-profit hospice in Phoenix, Arizona. I previously had the privilege of serving under Dr. Hamilton’s leadership years ago when I served as the Social Worker with the Dementia Program at HOV. During those five years, the foundation of my dementia care career was formed by Dr. Hamilton and the two phenomenally smart and caring nurse practitioners who have both since obtained Doctorates in Nursing Practice. Y’all, these women are remarkably talented and dedicated to improving care for those living their last months and years with dementia. They are my tribe and my career has been ever-shaped by the years spent working alongside them. Last summer...

Alright, my friends. We have battled Black Friday, supported local on Small Business Saturday, and spent many screen hours on Cyber Monday. Now, let's take a few moments to reflect on the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. How did it go for you as you balanced the holiday with caregiving for someone living with dementia? Were there tough lessons learned the hard way about what your loved one with dementia can tolerate at this point? Were there special moments of connection with your loved one? I hope there were more of the latter and less of the former. I'd love to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. We can all learn from each other.  One of my favorite sayings is “when we know better, we do better” and that holds very true in dementia care. Certainly, we have good intentions and want the best for our loved ones. Yet when we don’t have a good understanding of their brain changes and how to best support them, we can at times contribute negatively to the experience. This topic ...

A well-intentioned daughter whose mother is living with dementia recently attended my "Sharing Holidays" talk in New England. During the Question & Answer time, the daughter explained that last year, she brought her mother to her (the daughter's) home for Thanksgiving. They had a nice afternoon of visiting and her mother seemed to be doing ok, despite some confusion and memory changes. The daughter went on to explain that right as they sat down for the 'big meal' - you know what I mean, turkey hot out of the oven, all the sides finished in perfect time and delivered to the table, grandchildren wrangled and placed at the "kids table", and the matriarch with dementia lovingly and respectfully escorted to the head of the table for the meal - when her mother stated "this has been lovely, can someone please take me home." She spared the details, but I got the sense that it their interaction went south from there. Her  question to me was what to ...