Caring for a loved one with Alzheimer

Alzheimer’s disease can affect anyone more so in seniors 60 and over.  Sometimes the family has to learn and change their life style in order to adjust and make your loved one comfortable. Be patient and just take things day by day. One day at a time is the moral behind this story, since all you can do is stay in control and help those you love.

In the beginning, Alzheimer’s disease can affect everyone in many different ways. Your loved one may slowly lose their memory, which as dementia progresses it may change the personality. The loved one may drift in and out of time by remembering long-term items and forgetting the short-term ones. This memory loss will and may affect the caregiver in different ways as well. The loved one may live in his or her home and at the same time not realizing where they are. 

Driving somewhere can be a challenge to the person who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. The short trip from their home to town that they may have drove a thousand times could take them three times longer than normal. The memory is lost. The mind works in a much different way; turning them around, right may mean left in their minds.

Remember things that happened ten years ago is sometimes easier than what they heard ten minutes before hand. Alzheimer’s patients have a hard time remembering short-term memories. The long-term memories are implanted in their minds but short term comes and goes just as fast.

Alzheimer’s can affect people in many different ways and memory loss is not the only thing that affects them. Besides memory loss, they might have a hard time with personal hygiene for instance. When taking a bath with or without assistance they could be easily frightened. Sometimes the patient will think the water is not good for their skin; it can frighten them to the point that they think they are drowning. The action may lead an expert to believe that OCD is present, yet it is merely a condition of the disorder. (OCD: People tend to think that they are plagued by disease and will reluctantly adhere to normal actions, such as taking out the trash, believing it can cause disease) Water is a freighting thing and this is something that the progressive condition known as dementia causes.

Dementia and Alzheimer’s are both related to an extent and both are related to the Alzheimer’s disease. Usually when an Alzheimer’s patient has one disorder, they will have the other, since Alzheimer’s disease develops into dementia.

Your loved one may feel angry with the caregiver, failing to realize what is happening. Sometimes the loved one gets mad at the caregiver and not someone else because they are together more. The caregiver is the mean person in patient’s life because they are the one trying to do what needs to be done, and the patient does not want to do these things.

Dementia and its symptoms can play a big role in the life of someone who has been affected with Alzheimer’s disease. There are many medications out now to help treat the condition and help make life a little easier for these patients. Don’t expect a cure for them because there is none at present, since the disease is brought on by aging.

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Alzheimer's patients will sink into their own little world eventually as time progresses.  They might stop eating, become incontinent, refuse medication; thinking it is poison. 

When you are caring for a loved one, it is so hard and depressing to sit and watch them slip back in time and into their own little world, sometimes into their childhood days. 

Just hang in there and be patient, giving them all the love and joy you can to make them comfortable.

As a family member of a love one with Alzheimer’s disease, it was hard for us to understand the whole illness but as time went on and we learned more about the condition, it wasn’t hard to understand.

It started back when I was still in school, we couldn’t understand why grandma would always forget where she was going. She would get lost and we would always worry about grandma’s whereabouts. So my grandpa finely gave the car away, since then she wasn’t able to drive anymore.

Grandma didn’t want to lose her driver license. For that was her independent. It was sad but we had to do it to keep her safe and we as family felt better knowing that grandma wouldn’t be out in the streets lost.

Then as time went by, we noticed more things about grandma that wasn’t right. I would go to her house as I always did and noticed that she was putting newspaper in the oven and turning on the stove. One day I went to grandma’s house and it was smoking. I thought for minutes that she had burnt something while she was cooking but I got to looking and I found the newspaper in the stove.

I asked grandma what she was tying to do and she couldn’t remember. I was scared at that point so I moved in next door to my grandparents.  Living next doors, I could be there to watch her without her knowing what I was doing. The move was a big help.

I would go over there to visit. She didn’t know what I was really doing. It got harder everyday for us to see the illness was taking my grandma. We would always say she would get better but she never did.

Grandma didn’t like baths. We would have to give her a bath and she would just hate that. That was a hard day for us. No one wanted to give grandma a bath because she would act out so bad. But as we learned about all this, we found out that people with Alzheimer’s does not like any form of water. So we would then just wash her up and that was better for us. We then had peace when it was bath day.

We would let grandma go shopping for the home and she would go to the bathroom when we would leave. But she would always end up going in her pants. So we would have to go back home and change her. She couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. It was hard for her as well because at that point she knew something was wrong but didn’t know what.

It got to the point that grandma would just lie around and sleep. It was too hard for us as family members to take care of grandma any more so we as family needed to have a talk and we thought it was best to put grandma in a nursing home where she could get all the help and care she needed around the clock.

It was the hardest thing we could have done as family members. Yet we knew we couldn’t do it anymore. Grandma was in the nursing home for about 12 years. We as family would see grandma slowly going into her own little world. 

We would go get her and bring her home for the holidays, or just go get her and take her out for ice cream. We were always there for grandma. But it was hard as loved ones to deal with this illness. It finally took grandmas life about 2 years ago. We as family miss grandma but she in a better place now, we still remember her, and all the good and bad times we had. It is hard to take care of a loved one with this illness. It is hard to deal with it because we watched grandma go from a strong healthy grandma to a sick grandma.