CHALLENGES OF BEING ALZHEIMERS CARE GIVER

Everyone who has cared for a terminally ill patient knows how heart breaking and difficult this can be. As alzheimers goes though seven stages over up to ten years, the challenges of caring will change. The early stages of care call for humour and patience and of course love.During these stages most problems are manageable and most of the time the patient can communicate, but as time goes on looking after a dementia or alzheimers patient will get much harder. As a dementia sufferer myself I worry about the last stages when memory is largely gone and cognitive abilities have deteriorated.This part calls for a special understanding that although the person inside is difficult to reach they are in fact still there. This is where the carer must assume that the patient can hear and understand. Sometimes they will and with the use of music from the era of the patient's youth and lots of touching and caressing the patient will respond much more. From my own experience of looking after my late wife who was terminally ill following three strokes and largely paralysed without the ability to speak I know the frustrations of the carer. You worry that you are not doing enough. Even though I had a live in nurse for day care I still felt guilty if I couldn't get home for lunch and I often worried about her. Although the last two years of her life was a sweet period when I felt great love for Jan, I sometimes missed going out for dinner or going tut for a show. I would quickly dismiss the thoughts but the resentment had been there. Then of course guilt would come. From what I read of caring for an alzheimers patient it seems that the carer has to enter the patient's inner world. So if the patient repeatedly says that they are hungry or even tells others that you havn't fed them, just bear in mind that your loved one just doesn't remember! This is the key to understanding alzheimers patients, their memory will deteriorate and allowance must be made for that If things get too much from time to time talk to a local alzheimer's association for advice and consider some day care to give yourself a break. Alternatively many care facilities will give respite care for a week or two. If you are the principal carer some kind of breaks over the years will be essential. You must come to terms with this and make arrangements without guilt. My own dementia is about the same. Mostly my memory is still good and I think that there is even a little improvement. I don't think that I have had any of those blank spots where I don't remember doing something. But then that's the problem I wouldn't remember would I ? But being serious Julian usually points out these events and so I am sure that there have been none for weeks. This is a definite improvement. The weather here in Paarl continues to be very hot and today we expect 40%. This will please Boysie as we will swim together. This morning I saw one of the squirrells who I thought had desreted us now that they have eaten all the avocadodos, so there must be something else for them to plunder! Keep taking the tablets. David Barnato. Paarl. South Africa