Alzheimer’s Confounding Contradictions
As an Occupational Therapist, my background in neurology is more extensive than many, but that knowledge didn’t help much when my mother experienced Dementia.I was accustomed to my patients improving, not deteriorating, and following a relatively predictable progression through therapy. Not so much with Alzheimer’s.My mother’s first family-witnessed incident of confusion (indicative of Dementia) o
The Alzheimer’s Caregiver: What’s Really Important
A few years ago, I was a member of a committee for which a friend of mine was the Chair. As so often happens, the members of the committee, myself included, strayed from the original topic and began arguing over the trivialities.My friend listened to us argue for a few minutes, but then interrupted the committee members. “A few years ago, I learned what was really important and what was not, and
The Moment You Discover Your Parent Has Senior Dementia
You discover it subtly, alone. You discover it long before the diagnosis. You’re only guessing, but later you look back and realize, yes, that was when you first knew.My mother and I are sitting in a Cracker Barrel restaurant across from one another. It is early April, ten in the morning, not many other people here. Outside, it’s in the nineties. At home in cool wind, the leaves are just bloss