Caregiving For Dementia

This is just an update of the family. 27 Months after losing Mommy!

This Episode is a continuation of what went on after Mommy was picked up.  

This is the first of a few episodes that goes through what you may feel right immediately after your loved one has passed away. There's not a whole lot to show notes with these episodes it's just me talking about what had happened immediately after Mama's death. What I thought would happen that didn't and that kind of thing. I hope these few episodes help you get along for a few months immediately following your loved one's death.

This episode is just a brief message to all those that are still downloading the podcast happy Thanksgiving to all.

Episode # 93 There comes a time in caregivers journey that they know time is very close to running out. We hear caregiving for dementia have realized that fact. The past five days Mama has not eat anything at all, the past four days Mama has not drank anything, and for the past three days Mama’s been very hard to wake up at all. When she is awake it’s about two minutes and she’s right back out. Mamas, breathing has also changed its no longer normal breathing. Doesn’t look the same, doesn’t sound the same as the normal breathing does Mama breeze through her mouth now and has for the past three days. And also she’s breathing through her mouth it’s not as loud as you would think it should be. If you listen to me anytime at all you know that we keep my older brother and his wife informed as to what mamas doing anytime something changes with Mama last night we had the hardest conversation the family can have. We talked about what to do when this journey is over. What to expect and what not t

Episode #92 Show Notes There are so many things in life that normal people take for granted. This becomes more apparent the longer you take care of your loved one. There are things that I take for granted because there things that come natural to me that Mama can no longer do for herself. Mama can no longer wash her face, brush her hair, brush her teeth, or even talk. Mama tries so hard to talk to us and you can see the frustration in her face as she tries to say something and can’t. Mama tries to hold a cup of something to drink and because of her Parkinson’s she shakes so bad that some of whatever’s in the cup spills out. Mama so apologetic when she makes a mess. One of the things that I have taken for granted myself in my caregiving was the fact that when Mama was taking care of my grandmother who fortunately was not as bad as Mama is Mama never asked me to stay with grandma to help with grandma. I always had free time on my hands to do whatever I wanted to do. And I’ve forgotte

  In your caregiving a lot of times you do things in the heat of the moment. After time goes by you wonder whether or not what you did was the right thing to do. A lot of caregivers won’t tell you everything that they go through in their caregiving. I am one of those people who won’t tell you every little thing that goes on in in the house with the caregiving I am one that won’t tell you what Mama has done to us I won’t tell you what we’ve done to Mama. What I tried to do in this podcast is tell you what we do and what we don’t do because of dementia. When we first started caregiving we didn’t know what we were doing at all. I’ve gone out to Facebook to the caregiving support groups and I have found that a lot of posts in those groups are things that we have had questions about in our caregiving. So I try to take this podcast and tell you what we have done in that situation and what we haven’t been in that situation All to try to help you in your caregiving. I am also taking some courses in podcasting through

Care Giving for Dementia Know It All Doctors Episode # 90 While in your caregiving journey there will be a lot of things that happened that you don’t understand. I know when not when we first started there was a whole lot that went on that we didn’t understand there’s a whole lot that I haven’t gone into with this podcast that went on when Mama first got dementia. That’s one reason why I started this podcast. What is a post on Facebook was talking about talking to a loved one’s doctor who asked the question, why are you getting your mothers hair done? He was told because Mama used to get her hair done Mama feels better getting her hair done Mama likes getting her hair done. I’m here to tell you after dealing with this stuff for eight years or more there are times when my mother still knows what’s going on around her. She may not know exactly what it is or who it is or exactly what’s being said but she still knows that somebody stalking door she knows it’s something’s been said to her. Stephanie and I asked Ma

  v Care Giving for Dementia Trying to get your loved one to do what ever Episode # 89   There are times when you try to get your loved one to do something that they don’t want to do. When that happens the only thing that you can do is back off and give a little better time and try again you just need to keep trying until it works. There are times where your loved one doesn’t want to eat now here with Mama sometimes that’s three days. We usually are able to get her drinks down her but not always. Mama sometimes just takes these spells where she just doesn’t want to eat anything at all doesn’t want to drink anything at all, and most of the time she’ll let you know that she doesn’t want it. We have come to the understanding that these ensures, boost, and Glucerna drinks are meal within themselves so as long as we can get mamas Glucerna her, she’s okay. With taking a bath there are times that Mama doesn’t want to take a bath I have come to conclusion that this is part of dementia. A lot of times we have to bath

Episode # 88 There are times when mama just seems to be staring out into space. There are times when mama doesn’t look at you but she looks through you. She doesn’t realize there’s anything going on around her. Over the Fourth of July weekend mamas great-granddaughter come to see her. Not mama seem to be fixated on the granddaughter but I’m not sure whether she realized it was her granddaughter or if she just realized that somebody different was in the house. Mama was not afraid of the granddaughter because she did allow the granddaughter to feed her some food, she did talk to the granddaughter, she did hold the granddaughter’s hand. Which I believe told us that mama was not afraid of the granddaughter. Mama was never one for the fireworks even before she got dementia now she would take us kids to see the fireworks are let us kids have fireworks at the house for the Fourth of July especially sparklers but that was back before the government said you couldn’t have a said the fireworks were

Episode # 87 This week’s episode of caregiving for dementia was inspired by a Facebook group post someone said something about their siblings giving them a hard time about caregiving for their loved one. If you are the main caregiver for your loved one you are the one that is dealing with the aftereffects of your siblings coming to visit. If they are not around 24 seven 365 days a year like you are, if they are not sharing in the caregiving you’ll need to be able to tell your siblings to kiss your you know what, if they start trying to telling you what you need to do and what you don’t need to do. Mamma’s had six of us kids five of us are still living. Three of the five have just up and disappeared. They don’t call, they don’t write, and they definitely, definitely don’t come around to see mom. They have been gone for 5 or 6 years and if they were to show up today I don’t know that I’d would let them in the house. I’m not even sure I’d have a long drawn out conversation with any of them.

  As your caregiving for someone and the longer it goes the more things go wrong. The more things do go wrong the more help you need. Toward the end of the school year it become apparent that we were going to need some help with mama, getting her from the bed to the pot getting her from the pot to bed getting them from the bed to the dinner table and so forth. This has never been more evident than when mama broke her hip somehow. Mama hasn’t been mobile for quite some time and now that she’s broken her hip it’s even worse mama no longer can set up by herself. This means that we have to do everything that involves moving mom ourselves. It’s already evident to us that were going to need some help so we made of call to Medicare and Medicare said talk to the doctor and get things set up. Well the things that the doctor has set up so far, is not what we need. We have a nurse that comes in we have a physical therapist that comes in we have an aide as well as a occupational therapist that has come into a valuate mom

Caregiving for Dementia 72 Hour Conversation Episode # 85 When Mama 1st got this dementia the doctor give her a lot of medication to take. A lot of it made Mama sleep. It made Mama pretty much a zombie. So I took half of it away from her. When I took half of the medication away from Mama, Mama woke up. Mama could function a little bit Mama was awake a little bit. Everything was fine. Although Mama still slept a good bit, until Mama broke her hip. When Mama broke her hip, I had asked the doctor for some help take care of her, so the insurance set out 4 or 5 different people to work with Mama couple nurses, a physical therapist, and an aide, and I don’t know who all else. The 1st person to come out, turned out to be a nurse and the 1st thing that she did was go through mamas medication. She found out that they all cause drowsiness. She even said that some of them were interacting with the others. So she took 3 or 4 more pills away from mom on top of everything that I took away. In 72 hours. I’ve had more conver

This week we know why Mama, is no longer able to set up from a lying down position on her own. We got up Sunday morning and put Mama on the pot when we got her there we notice that are left leg was swollen as big as a small basketball, and it was as hard as a brick. This prompted me to call mom is Dr. and explain what was going on. The doc said, take her to the emergency room. In the emergency room, They did a sonogram on Mama’s left leg and they found a blood clot that was old. They also took some x-rays of the left leg and that told them that Mama had somehow, someway broken her left hip. The only way that they’re able to fix a broken hip is surgery. So I talked to the rest of the family that has anything to do a mom, and we have decided that due to mamas age and mamas other physical problems we have decided not to do the surgery. We don’t think that Mama would come through the surgery to start with, let alone all the pain that surgery causes. The only reason to have the surgery would be so that Mama could

Getting Old with Dementia Episode # 83 The longer you take care of someone with a mental disease. The more problems you have. In the past 2 weeks, Mama has developed a few new problems, one of which is not being able to set up from a lying down position, all by herself. The longer I’m taking care mom, the harder it’s becoming to move her around. Now that she not only can’t set up. It’s also causing a problem with her standing up even though she has a hold on me. I’m finding out that I am not that it be able to pick her up, hold her up and do what I need to do after a bathroom trip, all by myself. The longer you take care of someone; it begins to dawn on you that there are just some things that you’re not going to be able to do all by yourself. It’s a lot easier to do some things with 2 or more people than it is with just one person doing it all. I find it much easier to move Mama around when someone else’s in the house. We started looking for someone to come help a few hours a week. We were able to find a lad

Episode # 82 This episode is about some feelings I have after reading some Facebook support group posts. Some news from a very old friend that reinforces the thought that dementia kills. I also asked the question whether or not we are taking care Mama correctly or not. A lot of times I get into the support groups on Facebook and the post that some people make often get me upset after reading them, because those post are sometimes nothing more than complaining about every day, normal things that happen when your caregiving for someone. Often times I forget the ones that are caregiving for someone else’s loved one. Although at the time, it does not stop me from getting upset. I’ve received some news from a very old friend that I haven’t talked to since I have been 17 years old that just reinforces the fact that dementia kills. I learned about 3 months ago that this friend’s mother had dementia unfortunately she lost her battle with dementia on Monday night. I reached out to the old friend and

Caregiving for Dementia Trying New Things with Dementia Episode #81 When you try new things with somebody that has dementia, they don’t always react the way you think they will. It’s not an easy thing to do. In fact, it’s quite difficult because they are used to certain things. And when you change those things they get a little confused, standoffish, and sometimes even a little scared. After having several coffee cups broken, we decided to go get some plastic drinking cups for Mama. We got Mama used to these cups, which was no easy task. She got used to holding something hard and when we give her the plastic clear see-through cups and she grabbed them a little too hard and they would collapse almost to the point of being closed. Fortunately, we got Mama used to the plastic cups. Unfortunately, we ran out of the plastic cups this week so we give Mama back her coffee cups, and unfortunately, it was several days before we got the plastic cups again. So Mama got used to the hard cups once again, and when we got t

Dementia exercise is what we talk about this week. You see the lady that we have coming in from the church is not only sits with mom, but she also gets Mama fed and puts Mama is a chair with wheels on it and gets Mama to work her legs a little bit. I have seen a change in Mama the past month as we’ve had this lady for Mama, because this lady doesn’t let Mama sleep all day. This lady gets Mama up this lady gets Mama fed this lady gets Mama to work her legs a little bit. This is something that we don’t normally do we let Mama sleep the biggest part of the day. I’m hoping to get Mama outside this summer, not only to get Mama a little bit more exercise, but also to exercise myself because I’m getting just a small tummy. So I think that walking Mama around 8/10 of a mile circle hear from the house would help us both tremendously. Yesterday I walked about a mile and a half from the store back to the house and my legs are hurting from the walk. Because I haven’t walk ed all winter long. I think getting Mama out in t

In this episode # 79, , I talk a little bit about Easter When I was a kid. Easter is a holiday for the children. When I was a kid, one of the 1st signs of spring was Easter. One of the 1st signs of Easter was the fact that we were able to go out and get some dress close to where for Easter Sunday. I talk about Mama not remembering those times. The times when we were kids and we went out my front yard running colored eggs for Easter, the times where we all got candy for Easter Mama doesn’t remember any of that. One of the other things that really stick out is the fact that Easter is a Christianity holiday. It’s a holiday where Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It used to be that whenever I wanted to know anything about the Bible or the church. I could go to Mama and say, Mama, what does this mean, what does that mean? And usually Mama knew right off the top of her head what things were. But with this devastating disease called, dementia, Mama can no longer do that. M