Dementia Reality Tour
Click to visit the slide show.
An article in the San Jose Mercury News describes a multi-sensory experience that simulates the perceptions and struggles of a person suffering from dementia. In Santa Clara ‘Dementia Reality Tour’ Shows What It’s Like to Live with the Affliction, Mercury News reporter Helen Shen describes how the simulation asks caregivers to complete routine activities of daily living (ADLs) while wearing gloves, goggles, socks, and certain accouterments that approximate the perceptions of a person with the brain disease.
Rick Carson of Immersion Reality Education designed the activities for family members to give them a sense of what it’s really like. The article includes reactions from many family members who find that the activities are helping them gain more understanding of their family member with dementia.
Read the story and take a few minutes to look at the slide show of participants completing the various tasks.
Caring About the Patient While Caring for the Patient – UChicago
Click here to visit the U of Chicago announcement site and watch a video.
The Bucksbaum Foundation has donated $42 million to the University of Chicago to create an institute that concentrates on clinical excellence with a focus on partnering with patients. What a common-sense, and timely idea. Disclosure: I have a graduate degree from U of C.
As university president, Robert J. Zimmer comments in the press release:
This generous gift offers the opportunity to bring a new level of rigor to the study of the doctor-patient relationship and clinical judgment. The Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence provides an important complement to the biological research and clinical strengths of this institution.
The main focus? Developing the environment for better communication thereby ensuring better patient care (and better outcomes when it comes to recovery). Adult children who are helping older senior parents through medical care often find that communication gaps occur frequently and are complicated by information overload and reticence of older patients to ask questions.
According to the announcement on the website: Read more »
Aging Seniors: What a Difference a Word Makes #2
Words matter, especially words that describe people who are aging. In every day conversation, disrespectful phrases such as “old people” or “old folks,” are commonly used. My parents and many of their friends detest these comments.
This week I listened to a podcast of a panel discussion, produced by a well-known media outlet, and buried in the interesting content were comments such as “too old” and “not all there.” So many of these words emphasize the gap between older and younger people. The problem is ageism, plain and simple.
Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community Supportive Language Card, Side 1
Growing old is a normal part of life, and while it can be hard work, most people manage it quite well with intellects intact.
Yet keeping a sense of self, not to mention pride, is a daily challenge so rigorous that perhaps it should even be added to the activities of daily living (ADL’s). Older seniors navigate a minefield of unintentional (my dad calls them tacky) comments and references designed to trivialize. The International Longevity Center, founded by the late Dr.Robert N. Butler (NY times Obituary), posts this short article, Old Age has Value in Today’s Youth-Oriented Society by Ithaca College Gerontology Professor John A. Krout. Dr Krout also heads the Ithaca College Gerontology Institute.
Some communities are trying to address the problem. Read more »
Senior Parents: What a Difference a Word Makes
Words matter, especially words that describe people who are aging. In every day conversation, disrespectful phrases such as “old people” or “old folks,” are commonly used. My parents and many of their friends detest these comments.
This week I listened to a podcast of a panel discussion, produced by a well-known media outlet, and buried in the interesting content were comments such as “too old” and “not all there.” So many of these words emphasize the gap between older and younger people. The problem is ageism, plain and simple.
Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community Supportive Language Card, Side 1
Growing old is a normal part of life, and while it can be hard work, most people manage it quite well with intellects intact.
Yet keeping a sense of self, not to mention pride, is a daily challenge — maybe this challenge should even be added to the activities of daily living (ADL). Older seniors navigate a minefield of unintentional (my dad calls them tacky) comments and references designed to trivialize, and it’s no small challenge. The International Longevity Center, founded by the late Dr. Robert N. Butler (NY times Obituary), posts this short article, Old Age has Value in Today’s Youth-Oriented Society by Ithaca College Gerontology Professor John A. Krout. Dr Krout also heads the Ithaca College Gerontology Institute.
Some communities are trying to solve the problem.
Activities of Daily Living — Declining Proficiencies
What signs illustrate a person’s increasing difficulty performing the activities of daily living (ADLs)?
At first they are not obvious. Instead a series of events and behavior changes gradually appear. Observed individually, each change doesn’t seem to represent much, but the trick is to view each observation as a puzzle piece that fits together with other observations and puzzle pieces. The complete picture can also be obscured by confusing resistance with skill difficulties –because the distress of a parent often manifests itself as irritation with others who are around in a living environment. Decisions about driving and assisting with finances -which had already occurred –were easy compared to understanding and acting on the discrete daily activities that made our parent’s daily life increasingly complet.
As much as a year can pass — what it took us — before an adult child puts together enough evidence to conclude that a parent’s ability to handle the activities of daily living is on the decline. In our experience, and that of people with whom we have spoken, an adult child’s lack of familiarity with the skill changes delays the decision to arrange additional support, and this delay appears to hasten a person’s difficulty with the activities of daily living –so things get worse faster. We wish that somewhere we had encountered something similar to the information below to help us understand more clearly what was happening to our parent.
Below we have reconstructed the order of the decline.
Aging Parents: ElderGadget Reviews for Older Consumers
Thanks to the Oregon Choice Blog Round-up for the tip about Eldergadget.com, a site with product reviews on a wide range of “elder-friendly” products. I’ve looked at the sections on digital cameras, luggage, vacuums, and coffee makers, and they are filled with helpful information.
I was especially excited to see Eldergadget’s review of the iPad as a possible digital tool for aging parents. I am thinking about purchasing the lower priced iPad as a birthday present for my father, soon to be 87. If I follow through with my idea, I’ll document our experiences here on the blog.
If ElderGadget.com continues to review products and considers adding some in the elderly aging parent category, it will help to fill in huge enormous knowledge gap that exists when aging children are suddenly on the prowl for products (telephones, TV remotes, radios) that can help parents maintain as much control with as many activities of daily living as possible.
Dementia, Assistive Technology, and the Telephone Search
As Mother’s dementia progressed, her ability to do basic tasks, the activities of daily living, decreased. Using the telephone, a critical communication activity, was increasingly difficult. Thus we were always on the lookout for a phone that required her to do less but enabled her to communicate and hear more.
Over time she progressed from the regular phones, some wireless and others with old-fashioned rotary dials (what she knew best), to a phone that had amplification and big buttons, and finally to a phone with our pictures on large pre-programmed auto-dial buttons. During the last two years, as Mother forgot how to dial numbers — first the ten digit kind and later the seven digit — we found a picture phone to be especially helpful. Read more »
Baby Boomers, Aging Parents, Caregiving Observations
About a month ago we attended an out-of-town gathering with fifteen or sixteen friends plus spouses, all in the 50′s – 60′s age group. Every single person we met that evening had at least one aging parent who needed caregiving and support.
The variety of caregiving arrangements was interesting, and after a long evening of activities and conversation on many topics, here are my observations from the caregiving discussions:
- It is really hard to intervene. Most people do not know about activities of daily living (and how they can help to evaluate a parent’s situation) until a problem occurs.
- Quite a few people manage caregiving long distance because they do not live anywhere near the parent. In this situation a decision is made to keep the parent in a familiar location, though not always in the familiar house where he or she has lived for a long time. A number of these aging parents eventually move to assisted living or nursing homes, but usually within communities where they have friends, churches, doctors, etc.
- In some cases, at least one aging child is living near a parent, and this child is managing the parent’s care. Sometimes there is tension when one of the of the long distance aging children arrives to visit and is full of energy and suggestions. The caregiving sibling feels misunderstood. Siblings, even when everyone is working together, can complicate things.
- Some people, though not very many, move a parent to live in a location that is closer to an aging child. This is the solution we reached with my husband’s mother. It worked well for us and for Mother.
- The long-term policies that many parents purchased, many when such policies first became available, are not especially helpful in paying for care due to restrictions and limitations.
- In house, round-the-clock aides during the last three – twelve months of a person’s life does not appear to be an option that most aging children consider for their parents. Sometimes this option is eliminated for money reasons, but at other times the family wants the security or simplicity of a skilled nursing facility, especially if they are managing the caregiving from long distance.
- The most challenging aspect of caregiving, in terms of time and energy, is dealing with the medical appointments and all the doctors that can become involved. Getting doctors to communicate long distance is exceptionally hard.
- Even with all of the end-of-life documents in order, there are disagreements among an aging parent’s children on end-of-life care.
Just an interesting sample of people who all happened to attend an evening social activity.
Becoming A Grown-up Child
One day in April 2007 my husband and I were the adult kids in our families — we are the only adult children
— and the next day we became what we laughingly call “real grown-ups,” helping first one, then two, and for a while all three of our parents. It’s time to give back, and we do so willingly and happily. However the process is not easy, and it is not free from anxiety and tension. Check out the As Our Parents Age About page to learn more about the mission of this blog.
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As Our Parents Age by Marti Weston is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
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Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available by emailing As Our Parents Age. To learn more about this blog go to the AsYourParentsAge About page.Connect with Marti on LinkedIn
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