Since I started reading here in late August, I have learned a lot.

I managed to find a bunch of books at our local resource library for
Alzheimer's  - and found them to be quite helpful. I especially enjoyed
"The Forgetting," by David Shent. Has anyone else read this one?

I also read an acquaintance's book (she wrote it), called "Death In Slow
Motion" (Eleanor Cooney), and found her to be refreshingly poignant and
wonderful in dealing with her own mother's descent into AD.

It seems my perspective is very different, however. I am not a family
member giving care. I am becoming a licensed elder caregiver, and in
this process am discovering things about how relatives act with one
another with regards to AD.

It's gotta be really hard, living with someone you love who has AD. My
heart goes out to ALL caregivers here who live with their AD loved one.
I cannot imagine the stress.

This week, my client's relative came up to visit. She's a registered
nurse and stayed with her four days, cleaning her apartment and spending
time with her, getting her ready for a move to another apartment (which,
I am assuming will happen next week). This new apartment has two
bedrooms. They are trying to find her a live-in caregiver who can be
there at night to help prevent night wandering. We're telling my client
that it's a room-mate. She's only 57 years old and has EOAD. (It started
about four years ago and she's already close to the last stage - i.e.;
she's now starting to forget how to wipe herself after using the
restroom - and I am gonna make her a funny sign to help her remember.
Does anyone have any clipart of a toilet and someone sitting on it with
toilet paper in their hand? I know this sounds crude, but signs DO help
this woman. Everything's labeled in her house; drawers, cabinets, etc.
and it WORKS. She can READ where everything is, and when she opens the
drawer with the forks, knives and spoons (NO SHARP KNIVES), she's never
disappointed. Her apartment is kept in almost 100% order for her, as
she's forgotten many many things.

I did get her engaged into our local day program with AD and other
patients needing support.

One of my questions is this:

Whenever I try to leave her there at the day program (which is the goal,
to get her to stay without me), she gets agitated and finds me - somehow
she just finds me. It's weird, you know? She finds me and then starts
walking as fast as she can towards me. So, I have to lie and tell her I
am just putting my coat in the vehicle and we'll go back inside.

She gets real agitated then; she doesn't *want* to go back inside.
Diversion time. I start taking her on small errands. She loves to ride
in the vehicle and see things, but what she really wants is to "go
home." For her, home is another town about 25 minutes away and
unfortunately my vehicle won't drive all the way down there without
problems. So, I find myself explaining this to her over and over again.

I have tried to be gentle with her, explaining that she needs to be at
the program volunteering because the people in there need her, but that
never seems to work. HOWEVER, she LOVES to dance and when we have
dancing there, she goes nuts, boogying all over the place! It's
wonderful to watch. :)

I just cannot convince her beforehand that we are dancing; she will say
something like, "Oh, no, I am not a dancer," when in fact she was an
accomplished one.

I saw some of her artwork today for the first time. This woman could
draw so much better than I can! (I draw birds). She put in details in a
softer fashion on her horses and humans, such as muscle definition,
contours and wisps of hair, that I can barely capture in my renditions
of horses and other mammals. (She also did drawings of people, something
I've never been able to accomplish with any accuracy).

I hear she was a lot of fun, loved Hawai'i and other tropical places.....

The point I am trying to make is that I haven't watched her deteriorate
over time; her friends and family have. That's where I feel I am
somewhat left in the dark; she and I knew some of the same people during
our time here in this area (she over 30 years, me almost 20), and we
never met. So, I haven't watched her deteriorate like her friends and
family, who do not live in this area, have.

It's got to be not only frustrating, but heart-breaking as well.

Here I am, helping to take care of a very beautiful woman, who one would
not think is as old as she is, nor would they think she is ill until
they watch her for a while. Most people upon meeting her think she is
mentally ill, when she is not; at least, not in the sense of most mental
illnesses (bio-chemical imbalances of the brain that cause
hallucinations of auditory and sometimes visual natures, highs and lows
in emotional outbursts, etc). No, this woman is ill in a much different
sense, and it's sad to watch - at the same time, I have found a lot of
tools in handling being around her.

It's sort of like making a game out of every thing that might be
unpleasant. That's why she seems to like going to the day program; she
thinks of it as a game. That's why she likes me; we get along on a level
that's mostly fun and games. A shower is a game, shopping is a game;
cleaning is a game. We laugh and joke at mealtimes about her weight (she
used to be real skinny; now she's gaining - maybe too much too fast, in
light of her current weight, because someone else besides me is going
inside feeding her even though I've already written it down in the
journal; they don't read it).

When I walk in to her place at the beginning of a shift and she's there,
I usually make like I am walking on a stage and make a big production
out of it (in a somewhat quiet way), and she loves it. She actually will
start mimicking what I am doing and laugh the whole time.

When it's time to leave and she knows it, I don't just walk away; I tell
her, very carefully and slowly, what it is I have to do and she is
almost always GOOD about it.

I know that this might show hope in the face of deterioration and that
at some point she will start getting more agitated and angry - but
remember, this is the lady who's already thrown a book at me and pounded
on my door, almost breaking it.

This is the woman who just today threw the wooden apple crate on the
floor in her apartment - it contains video tapes for her to watch
whenever she wants to - and she had no problem at all with my picking it
up and fixing it - she even helped me pick everything up because I sang
a song about the lady who threw a fit like a two year old, and she
laughed along with me.

My credo is to try to make everything fun, interesting and even if it's
goofy as heck, just remember how goofy you got when you were a kid;
revisit that time whenever you feel like the person you are caring for
is driving you completely batty, repeating things over and over again,
or doing the same unexplainable action over and over again, or wondering
what they are supposed to be doing next, even though you just told them
five times already.

Think JIM CARREY and act on it, without the crudity, unless, of course,
your charge likes that kind of stuff. . .

And most of all

SMILE and remember to rest.

Making these last years of your loved one's life fun and interesting
will be refreshing for you and fun for your charge, even if they don't
remember it.

My client and I have a new catch-phrase, and she *remembers* it!

It's from the Dr. Scholl's commercial "Are you gellin'?" Whenever she's
upset, I say, "Are you gellin'?" and she always smiles and says, "Like a
felon!" ;)

Hope this brings some smiles through some tired eyes tonight,

God bless,

Feather