What Does Dementia Forget? Most of us dementia caregivers get into trouble because we forget what dementia forgets. Believe me, I know. I’m almost as bad as you are. But not quite. Here is my special reminder list for you. Think of it as a check-list of things that will drive you crazy if you [...]

Dementia – Done Right Dementia is a really challenging disease for family caregivers for two quite different reasons. One, it is infinitely variable, even in the same person. Two, this is your family member being quite a different person from the one you knew before. Most disease doesn’t do that. Heart disease doesn’t radically change [...]

Present Moment Dementia Imagine that your child had appendicitis. Could you imagine a family conversation about whether or not you’d do the operation on the kitchen table? I hope not. Yet, families often get caught in a kind of equivalent around a parent with dementia. What shall we do? How can we get our parent [...]

Living Inside the Dementia Bubble Diary #1 Living with, and caring for my Dad and his dementia has increasingly, over the last couple of years, become something of a fertile field for me in terms of understanding the shifting states of our realities. It started out conventionally with my world and his world, and there [...]

Dementia Family Caregiver Bonus Everyone knows looking after someone with dementia can be very difficult. It can and it sure is extra helpful if you aren’t related to the person. As an outside caregiver, I’ve always enjoyed my people with dementia. They had it from the first moment I met them. That was why I [...]

Dealing With Alzheimer’s Tantrums Let’s face it, an awful lot of so-called Alzheimer’s violence is not even due to Alzheimer’s. Nor dementia of any kind. It may well be a serious previously-undiagnosed mental illness, such as paranoid schizophrenia. You think that’s incredible? Well, these days, I recognize the warning keywords that suggest family members get [...]

Is it Even Alzheimer’s? This is a totally non-medical maverick view of Alzheimer’s, based on my 20 years of working with people alleged to have that much-feared disease. From this, you may learn how not to have Alzheimer’s. Or not? Hey, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? So, this is what I’ve noticed. In my [...]