September 21, 2009

I have spent weeks, if not longer, researching a variety of topics relating to caring for our elderly parents. As important as it is to lovingly care for our elderly parents, it is also a daunting task at best. While researching the various aspects and responsibilities involved with caring for elderly parents, I was surprised to find little information regarding the care of elderly parents who, due to their own personalities and tendencies, make it extremely difficult if not impossible to have the parent living in your home.  Read more... (1706 words, 2 images, estimated 6:49 mins reading time)

Reminiscing about the war and school lessons from earlier days can improve the memories of elderly people in care homes, psychologists have found.

A study of 70- to 90-year-olds living in care homes in Somerset and Cornwall discovered that the sharing of stories from the past increased memory scores for the residents by 12%.

But the memory enhancing effect was seen only in people talking in small groups and sharing memories; it was not evident when elderly people reminisced speaking to just one carer.  Read more... (313 words, 2 images, estimated 1:15 mins reading time)

How Has a Support Group Helped You Cope With Being an Alzheimer’s Caregiver?

ALICE: After my husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease two and a half years previous, I decided after trying to do everything on my own thinking I could take care of every situation, I decided I couldn’t and I needed to go for help. So I decided to go to a support group, where the people know this whole situation that I’m going through and they could help me. And I get a lot of input and a lot of feedback and a lot of help with certain situations that come up that I have no clue [how] to really deal with. So, I found it extremely helpful. And I wouldn’t miss it; I hate to miss a night because it is so important to me. It’s been a big help.  Read more... (488 words, 2 images, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Four Alzheimer’s Caregivers Discuss Their Decision to Join a Support Group

This is part one of the transcript from a special roundtable discussion featuring Alzheimer’s caregivers. In this section, the participants — Alice, Maureen, Phyllis, and Joe — talk about why they sought out a support group in their community.

How Has a Support Group Helped You Cope With Being an Alzheimer’s Caregiver?  Read more... (607 words, 2 images, estimated 2:26 mins reading time)

By Keren Smedley

When my elderly mother was diagnosed with vascular dementia nine years ago at the age of 81, my sister and I naturally assumed that we shared a common goal – to look after her and manage her care in the same way. But what emerged in the weeks and months that followed her diagnosis was a far cry from sisterly love and affection.  Read more... (896 words, 2 images, estimated 3:35 mins reading time)

Dear Bel,
I’m in my late fifties and have cared alone for my father (in his nineties) for the past five years. There is little left of the person that I once was — creative, intelligent, with a life and friends. When I moved into my father’s house I left behind my friends, home and freedom and lost my partner because he couldn’t cope with my being a carer. I don’t drive (medical reasons) and this house is rural, with no bus services. I feel very isolated, and although, twice a day, care workers come in to wash and dress him, these kind people know me only as the “dutiful daughter”, and our conversation is invariably about my father. The few friends that I’ve kept from before tell me how wonderfully I’m doing, but they don’t understand that I feel as if, in Yeats’s words, “Too long a sacrifice/ Can make a stone of the heart.”
I am childless and an only child, so there is no one else to take on this duty. I used to get on well with my father, but being in an inverted-parental role has eroded much of our old friendliness. I have had some counselling in the past, but advice such as “look after yourself and consider your own needs” didn’t help, since there was no suggestion as to how I could address the one real need I have — to be free of this undertaking and to rebuild my own life.
My father is becoming incontinent, which tips me over the edge. I have schooled myself to cope with emptying commodes, but more than that and something in me snaps. Although the care workers will clean him up, if he gets dirty when they are not due, the agency will not send anyone to help, nor will social services. As neither I nor my father want me to clean him up, the only alternative is to leave him in his own mess until the next carer is due. Recently I told him I cannot go on like this. He said: “But you have your whole life ahead of you!” Besides his deafness, my father has the selfishness of the very old, and is genuinely unaware of the reality of those around him. He told me that if I put him in a home, it would be “the end of him”, and pleaded with me not to do so. He is not communicative nor emotional, so this counted as an outburst.
I feel terrible at the thought of turning him out of his own home, and guilty and sad at the thought of giving up on him — but I don’t know what else to do. Recently I went to look around a nearby home, which was very pleasant — clean, warm and welcoming. I want to persuade my father at least to visit it, but I don’t know how to convince him that I’ve almost come to the end of my tether, and desperately need my own life back. As I don’t really feel justified in sending him to a home at all, I find it very hard to be as assertive as I must be to persuade him. It seems easier just to carry on as I have been doing, givinghim the best care possible in his own home until he dies. But by then I shall be facing old age myself. Please help me to see that I have a right to my life, too. Hilary  Read more... (1625 words, 2 images, estimated 6:30 mins reading time)