Dementia Home Care: How to Prepare Before, During, and After
Dementia caregivers cope with repetitive questions, mood swings, lost personal space, and live with exhaustion, frustration, and anger. You may not know how to prepare. Dementia Home Care covers:Life hacks like camouflaging doors to prevent wandering, or “mom” bags for life’s little emergencies and what to stock in it for road tripsDistraction Techniques—Nursery Rhymes, warm blankets, foodHoarding—Thinning “collections” during sleep periods, removing trash completely from premises, canceling subscriptions, blocking shopping channelsInformation needed by emergency medical personnel—what is needed on a medication list, and list of physical ailmentsWorking with your Pharmacist—drug interaction checksMemory Aids—memory boards, memory books, flash cardsPowers of Attorney—Power of Attorney Health Care, Durable Power of AttorneyDeath—Contacting the Credit Bureaus to add a Death Watch when a family member dies, reporting a death to Social Security, obtaining death certificatesDistinguishing the difference between a hallucination and delusionAddress the empty nester experience after the loss of a loved one—to a nursing facility or to death These are a few of the skills and tips covered in Dementia Home Care. While these tools will not stop dementia, they may ease your pain—and these skills can be taught to anyone. Whether you read from cover to cover or are a page-fanner, Dementia Home Care will help you maintain your humor and your emotional connection with your loved one longer. The purpose of Dementia Home Care is to help you look back with pride and joy. The target audience is women between the ages of 42 and 65. They represent the majority of unpaid care givers for loved ones with dementia. Dementia Home Care: How to Prepare Before, During and After will examine taking on the role of care giver and help them make informed decisions about in-home care giving. It will give examples of how to create a safe living space, how to use distraction techniques, and suggest available resources for the care giver. It will emphasize the role of care giver respite and participating in dementia community support to relieve the daily stress of dementia care. Home care giver, Tracy Cram Perkins, will use anecdotes drawn from twelve years of experience. Demetia Home Care will cover aggressive behavior, coping strategies, memory aids, communication aids, and support services. There is a space at the end of each chapter for the reader to record special or humorous moments with their loved ones. And it will address the empty nester experience after the loss of a loved one—to a nursing facility or to death—rarely covered in other books of this genre. This life-lesson of care giving is not meant to destroy us but meant to remind us to take care of ourselves, forgive ourselves, accept ourselves. To know other people trudge up this same hill with us every day. To pay forward kindness in some measure. To know laughter has not abandoned us. At the end, to know some measure of joy.
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