Mother’s dementia is progressing. I’ve mentioned in other posts, that she needs a caregiver all of the time, except when she is sleeping (she sleeps soundly). She is almost always confused, asking many times a day, “What should I do?” I find myself searching the web for confirmation of what I see each day. Today … Continue reading
Tagged with Alzheimer’s …
Dementia Music Therapy: Broadway Songs
Mother Weston’s New York trips were legendary. Each trip included a balance of shopping, museum visits, plays, and Broadway musicals. From the early 1950’s until the mid 1980’s she and father made at least one and sometimes two trips to NYC each year usually for more than a week. Her love of Broadway musicals continued … Continue reading
Dementia: Loss of Mobility
We see it coming — mother’s loss of mobility. At first she took smaller and smaller steps. Gradually those steps turned into larger shuffling steps. We bought her a cane, but she did not have the focus to understand how to use it. Little by little the big shuffles turned into tiny ones. She has … Continue reading
Stages of Dementia, Part II
Keep in mind that these stages are general guidelines that help people understand dementia’s progression, and that some professionals do not use them as disease guideposts. I am applying them to the dementia that is occurring in my family. Another family may not have anywhere near the same experience. By the time stage five of … Continue reading
Stages of Dementia – Part I
When you read about dementia you learn that the disease presents itself in stages. The literature seems to describe six stages, seven if you think of stage one as the “normal” range in which most of us function. I am reconstructing these stages, attempting to understand the progression of the disease in our family. In … Continue reading
Dementia is a Terminal Illness
As I understand it, dementia describes a set of symptoms — I mentioned some of these in my last post. Different types of dementia seem to have a slightly different configuration of symptoms and some can be diagnosed while others, like Alzheimer’s can be tentatively diagnosed, but only truly documented after a person dies (by … Continue reading
How Dementia Creeps into a Life
You don’t recognize dementia for a long time. In fact, why would anyone want to recognize this disease in a much loved parent? In retrospect, the dementia first came into our family several years ago. A stroke made the symptoms worse. We noticed clothes not being hung up, keys being lost, a concern about valuables … Continue reading
As Our Parents Age So Do We 