I am a caregiver to an elderly woman suffering from mixed dementia (Vascular Dementia and Alzheimer Disease). With this blog, I want to share my experience with other caregivers. Your comments and feedback are important to me, and are welcome.
The diagnosis was set a little less than a year ago. During the past 9 months, I have been on a roller-coaster, adapting as I could to a variety of symptoms and behaviours. The minute I think I have things settled, another set of symptoms or a different behaviour kick in. Is this your experience as well? How do you cope?
The biggest challenge I face with my mother is getting her to eat properly. Lately, I haven't been able to get her to eat «real food». So dinner is always supplemented with a bottle of Ensure. I know this will only lead to the illness advancing at a quicker rate, but no measure of encouragement, or dissuasion, can get her to eat real food. What would you do or how did you manage?
Over the past months, I have been able to put some support tools in place. I am lucky enough to have a weekly period for respite. A half-day, once a week and, every other week, an eight-hour period instead of the four-hour break.
I find our health system seriously lacking in terms of information and medical support. Prescriptions are issued but no regular follow-up is made. The doctor is gauche in his approach... sometimes the information the caregiver needs is simply not given. Have you had this problem? How did you settle it? Did you have to change doctors?
I look forward to hearing about your experiences, or receiving your suggestions. I feel as though I am reinventing the wheel and I have to admit that I find the situation very challenging.
2 comments:
What lovely pictures. I'm sorry about your mom's diagnosis. This is quite a roller coaster ride. I would like to suggest a book that some other caregiver's told me about three years ago and that has helped me so much in understanding the disease and various coping methods. It's "36 Hour Day" and it is targeted to professional staff as well as lay caregivers.
Ensure Plus is my mom's favorite meal, she has two or three a day plus a lot of ice cream and milk shakes (really, just fruit smoothies). Dental problems have taken the joy out of eating for her.
I also find taking mom for rides and out to parks where there are lots of people is helpful.
I really look forward to see more of your blogs.
Take care, Colleen
Thank you Colleenmc. I'll definitely go hunting for the book. It's a compound problem, I think. Dental, and not associating the names of food with the food itself (she doesn't remember or says she never ate it before). She also has side effects that look like allergies (runny nose, sneezing) that start whenever she eats, so the meal is interrupted nearly before it begins, never to resume again. I hope we find a solution.
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