Rewiring My Brain and Stepping into Alzheimer's World

Once you start to understand how things work in Alzheimer's World you get calm and comfortable. Once you get calm and comfortable you give off a better "vibe" to someone that has Alzheimer's.

By Bob DeMarco
Alzheimer's Reading Room

I would find a new way to communicate with my mother who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

I wrote that on my da Vinci pad in 2004. This was at the same time I was coming to another conclusion, something had to change and that something was me.

I did not perceived the changes in communication as being difficult. After all, I had been studying communication and decision making all the way back to college days, and ever since. I figured some practice and I would get the hang of it.

What I did not immediately perceive was how difficult it would be to change all the things I had learned over the course of my life.

For example, I had to learn how NOT to feel bad when my mother said something mean spirited to me.

Alzheimer's Caregiver Bridget

We do have our "dull" moments and I feel quilty that I can't fill every minute with activity, because I know she would be happier.

Alzheimer's Reading Room 

Our reader Bridget wrote:

I am at a loss somedays for what to do, my mother-in-law, a very strong willed woman before ALZ, helped run my husbands business for almost 20 years.

Over the last four years I have started working in the business taking over her duties. She is 85 and we bring her to work every day, but as technology changes and the disease progesses there is less that she can do and more for me to do.

We try jigsaw puzzles, adding up utility bills, sorting items to be filed, it all keeps her busy for a moment but involves a lot of my direction, at some pont, I really have to work and can't keep her entertained.

That leads to napping, endless questions, and irritation on both our parts. People suggest taking her to daycare (I hate calling it that) but I'm afraid of her reaction and that she will be scared and upset when I leave her. There are suggestions of giving her a coloring book, but she's not a child, and I don't want to insult her. So, we do have our "dull" moments and I feel quilty that I can't fill every minute with activity, because I know she would be happier. But I will keep trying and see a "Harvey" in our future.

LIFESTYLE CHANGES AND MUSIC AS ALZHEIMER’S THERAPY?

Can either exercise, or healthy diet, or mental activities, or socialization, or music

be used as a therapy to treat people living with Alzheimer’s?

By Wantland J. Smith
Alzheimer's Reading Room

This Man Decided to Fight Alzheimer's
-- Jay Smith

I think each of these “lifestyle” strategies should be adopted as an urgent priority as a matter of public health and national survival. But, even if the potential benefits were to become widely accepted, I acknowledge that their effectiveness will ultimately depend upon the extent of people’s willingness to commit to doing the therapy persistently.

But wait a minute! No one is promoting using these lifestyle prevention strategies as a treatment regimen. Nonetheless, I am beginning to, at least for myself, after living with the symptoms of Alzheimer’s for a long time – six years since my diagnosis of “early Alzheimer’s disease,” and more than a dozen years since the first symptoms became worrisome enough that I sought a neurological workup to try to find out what was causing them.

Read the complete article.