Dementia Dimensions

Dementia Resource Center Blog for At Home Caregivers

Tom Harner

  • Book Review

A Heartbreaking Caregiver Account That Inspires Us to Embrace What Remains

Early on in her memoir Embracing What Remains, Andrea Couture describes her father—at the time a physician navigating his own retirement party—as “a man who had changed people’s lives, saved them, and led a team of proud and energized people.” At the event, Couture hears her father’s colleagues, friends, and even former patients describe him as not only a brilliant practitioner and clinical leader, but as an empathetic one.
  • Caregiver Perspective, Emotional, Physical

4 Ways You Can Help Connect a Caregiver to Respite Care

Maybe it should not be surprising that family caregivers often have such a hard time seeking respite. For many caregivers, the role is essentially a fulltime job with no time clock to punch and no office or employee lounge to retreat to for a quick recharge.
  • Caregiver Perspective, Emotional, Engagement

Challenges for Caregivers of Someone Living with Frontotemporal Dementia

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is the most commonly diagnosed form of dementia for Americans under the age of 60. Still this dementia, caused by a loss in nerve cells in both the frontal lobes and temporal lobes of the brain, is relatively rare, accounting for around 2 percent of the estimated 7.2 million dementia diagnoses in the United States.
  • Book Review, Emotional

Inspiring Book on Dealing with Chronic Disease

“Dancing is a playful way to engage that what we fear most.” In his 2017 book Dancing with Elephants: Mindfulness Training for Those Living with Dementia, Chronic Illness, or an Aging Brain, author Jarem Sawatsky suggests a brave way to approach the” big, unacknowledged fears” in our lives that he calls “elephants.” Sawatsky says that “once we become comfortable with the idea that suffering exists, we need to learn to let go of fear and replace it with love.”Sawatsky’s elephant is Huntington’s Disease, a movement disorder that is hereditary and eventually fatal.
  • Ask Mary

How do you protect your feelings when your parent with dementia lashes out? I feel as though my mother is resentful that I am continuing with my daily life now that she’s limited. Her comments are mean and I am left distraught and sad. -Eliza

Dear Eliza: This is a hard part of being a caregiver. Being criticized or otherwise subjected to cruelty is never pleasant, but it’s especially hard to take from someone you love and are trying to care for.
  • Caregiver Perspective, Engagement, Joy Plan

Caregivers Are Key to Unlocking Joy

The 40th President of the United States, the late Ronald Reagan, lived with Alzheimer’s disease over the final decade of his life.
  • Ask Mary

My husband is in a really good memory care, but he always says he wants to stop by our house. Everyone says this is a really bad idea and creates a mess. Now he’s angry and calling me to say that I want him to die in memory care. Any suggestions?

“Everyone” isn’t always right. You know your husband better than anyone. Do you think it will “create a mess”? A visit home can go badly, no doubt.
  • Emotional, Physical

Dementia Caregiver Tips for More Pleasant Meal Times

Maintaining good nutrition and positive eating habits while navigating through the stages of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias can be a struggle. Caregivers may face a number of challenges, including loss of appetite, loss of taste, and changing food preferences as well as the possible need to integrate special diets when necessary.
  • Ask Mary, Emotional, Physical

How does one find respite care? I won’t put my wife in nursing home but I really need a break.- Doug S.

Caregiving is an enormous job, and you do need breaks.  See below for some local (Rochester, New York area) resources for respite care.
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