On elderly caretaking, engaging her mother who’s diagnosed with dementia more, to help her get more socialization with her external environment, translated…
“Mom has Alzheimer’s!”, at the end of last year, a written diagnosis confirmed our, sisters’, worries, and ever since, we are, trekking on this, irreversible, can only hope to slow the process, long road to caretaking…………..
Through understanding more of the disease, we’d learned to understand, and then, adapt ourselves, to my mother’s change, and we’d, used the Long-Term Care 2.0 program’s resources, with the assistance of the case managers, to help us gain more resources, of these, the most rejuvenating was, that we’d found that in the community my mother lives in, there’s, a long-term care location, offering the five-and-a-half days’ worth of free classes. This help that’s, too close by, isn’t it, the best remedy for “increasing human contact”, the best method to delay the impacts of Alzheimer’s Disease.
My mother’s biggest shame was she couldn’t read, and yet, at the age of eighty-eight, she was, sent into the classrooms, and became, an older classmate. To help her feel safe and secure, and to help the foreign nurse to get a breather, we’d decided to take turns, accompanying her to class, at the start of this year, my new weekly routines included going to class with my mother two, three times a week.
like this…
an art course, for the elderly…photo from online
The interactions at home, I’d, felt bad about her losing the ability to take care of herself, and, upon entering into class, I’d realized, that she’d not just lost her ability for language, and memories, that her thought processes crumbled too. During the class, watching the other elderly engaging in interactions, and my mother who’d found it hard to be a part of the group, can only, sit and stare into space, it was, so disappointing. Although the instructor gave the assignments out based off of each of the elderly’s progressions, but my mother lacked self-confidence, and even in the simplest tasks “choose a color”, she’d, stood still, unable to pick, wanting me to decide for her. Other than it drained out my patience, I can’t help but blamed my mother for being too dependent, she’d told me in a tiny voice, “I didn’t go to school, I can’t read!”, later I took her to get an eye exam, and the ophthalmologist told me her eye sight had, deteriorated, and I’d, blamed myself for not being attentive enough, and my heart ached for her.
Later, I’d, adjusted my own mindset, and, saw taking my mother to class as a learning opportunity for us both, and, I did most of the “handiwork” with her assisting me, so she didn’t feel any pressure, and would enjoy her self in the process, and gave her encouragements from time to time, and, took shots of her smiling with her completed projects in hand, and, with the increased participation of the work in class, her living room became, a show room.
“Your mother is very blessed, she has you to accompany her to class every day!”, I don’t know if my mother could understand the envy of the other elders, but, like the experts stated, “to leave NO regrets in long-term care, accompany your elders every day!”, every day, facing the sun, accompany my mother to class, it’s now, a calling of mine, it’s a lesson, a blessing, and, it shall be, the daily activities that we will keep on, doing, for as long as we both can.
an exercise course works too! Photo from online
And so, this still just showed, how important it is, to engage the demented elderly person daily, like the mother of this woman, she was very turned in from the beginning, but with the encouragements of the teacher, as well as her daughter who accompanied her to class, she’d, gained a little more self-confidence each and every day, and, the daughter will have NO regrets, looking back too, because the two of them shared this wonderful time together, even if the mother ends up, forgetting about everything, so long as the daughter keeps it in mind.
Life, the Obstacle Course 