Welcome back Careblazers!

Today I want to talk to Careblazers who are not living near their loved one with dementia. It is really easy for Careblazers to feel like they can't do much when they are living far away but I want to share ideas that you can do to help your LOWD and to help anyone who is caring for your LOWD who lives close. I hope this is helpful. 

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

#1- Do Not Feel Guilty

Many times when a loved one develops dementia and lives out of state, it’s easy to feel guilty. You may feel like you should be there, like you can’t do all that you want to do. However, guilt has never ever helped any situation, it just doesn’t. There are many different reasons you may not be able to live with or near your LOWD and that is ok. You don't have to justify it to anybody. Everyone's situation is different. That is life. Don't feel guilty. 

#2- Assist with Hands Off Tasks...

Hi there Careblazer, welcome back. 

I recently received a question from a Careblazer who asked what can speech therapy do for someone with dementia? Her loved one with dementia was referred for speech therapy and this Careblazer was confused about what exactly that would do. I think this is a wonderful question and I’m guessing you may be wondering the same thing. 

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

When it comes to giving good dementia care and good geriatric care, I always say that multiple different disciplines need to be involved. Great care for your loved one with dementia usually involves more than just one doc. People like nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, PCP’s, neurologists, occupational therapists, nutritionists, they all can play a helpful role in the care of your loved one. I’ve worked with some amazing teams in my career and the best teams absolutely included a speech pathologist. 

So...

Hi there Careblazer, 

I hate that I even have to write about this, but unfortunately, there are too many stories that I can’t ignore this important topic. 

There are laws in place to protect older “vulnerable” adults from abuse and neglect. In the U.S. it’s called Adult Protective Services. Similar to how there are laws in place to protect children, there are laws in place to protect adults.

The goal of these laws and the organizations who investigate reports is  to prevent older adults from being abused, neglected, and exploited. As I’m sure all of you are aware older adults and especially older adults with dementia are frequently the victim of scams. APS helps investigate any reports of such abuse. 

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

While most of the information out there focuses on people who are actually doing the abusing, I want to talk about a different perspective. There may come a time, when...

Hey there Careblazer, 

Today I want to share with you a simple way to respond to your loved one with dementia when they are upset, angry, having delusions, insisting on something that’s not true, and any other wide variety of behaviors that are difficult to handle and that you feel at a loss for how to respond. 

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

We already know that trying to argue, reason, rationalize with someone with dementia usually does not end well. You and your LOWD are typically left with even more frustration than there was in the beginning. So what else can you do? 

Many Careblazers have great success with responding to the emotion behind the words and not the words themselves. 

Let me give a few examples, 

Let’s say your loved one keeps sayings someone is stealing their things and is insisting someone came in and stole their glasses. When you try to tell them that no one stole their glasses, that they...

Well hello there, Careblazer. Welcome back. In last week’s post I talked about how to deal with other people’s opinions of you and how you care for your loved one with dementia (click here for that video). 

Today, I want to talk about the desire or urge to get others to understand what you are going through. I think these two topics are very closely related and can cause a lot of stress, guilt, and frustration for the Careblazer. To watch my video on this topic click here. 

Okay, let’s get started.

I sometimes get questions from Careblazers asking me how to get their family members to understand what its like being the caregiver. Usually that kind of desire is from a need for others to offer help, offer sympathy, or just offer support. Totally understandable. It’s hard to go about this alone.

Families can be hard and when dementia is involved it can be especially hard for families to come together. In many situations, there is usually one main...

Hi there Careblazer,

Welcome back. Today I want to talk about other people’s opinions on your caregiving situation. If you would like to watch my video on this topic please click here. Let me know if any of this sounds familiar.

You are thinking of placing your LOWD and people tell you that you shouldn’t do it. He doesn’t seem that bad. He won’t get good care. You can keep doing it.

People who talk to your loved one tell you they don’t seem all that bad and start to look at you as if you are exaggerating everything. She seemed fine when I talked to her on the phone.

People tell you what you should be doing differently.

To make things worse, many times the people who are telling you these things are actually family members or friends and that is hurtful. It leads to feeling angry, guilty, and a whole bunch of other negative emotions.

You may even feel judged like people think you are selfish and not doing a good job caring for loved one....

Welcome back Careblazer! Today I want to answer some of your questions. I receive a lot of questions from Careblazers and unfortunately I can’t answer them all through email or comment responses. Most of your questions deserve more than a few sentence response so that’s what today is all about - Careblazer Questions.

If you have any questions, all you have to do is leave them below any post. I go through them all and you might just see your question answered in a future post.

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

This post is sponsored by my Care Club- It’s a private course dedicated to improving dementia caregiver stress & improving your interactions with your love done with dementia. It’s a way to start living a life you feel good about again. I believe strongly that it is possible to value yourself and do a wonderful job at caring for your loved one with dementia. If you want to be alerted to the next time this course is...

Welcome back Careblazer, I hope you are doing well!

Today, I want to talk about something that can help turn anger toward your loved one into compassion. If you are like many of the Careblazers I know, then your LOWD has probably done things to drive you crazy, make you upset, maybe even straight up angry. It’s normal, you are human, and it will probably happen again.

What I want to share with you is a way to think about some of those situations differently so that instead of sitting in that anger, festering in that frustration, and ruining your whole day, you can find a way to move forward and make sure things don’t get worse.

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here.

Remember how we’ve talked about how your feelings impact your actions and those actions will impact your loved ones behavior. This means that staying upset and angry carries a greater chance of your loved one becoming upset and having more challenging behaviors and the last...

Today I want to talk about some common conditions that happen in older adults, that can look exactly like dementia, but it’s not dementia. The danger here is that if everyone just assumes it’s dementia, it can cause you and your loved one to be living lives that are significantly below the quality of life that you both can have.

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

Sometimes as people age and start to show signs of confusion and forgetfulness, it’s easy for people to just assume they are having thinking problems, or the beginning stages of dementia when in fact it can be something entirely different. So let’s go over some of the common culprits.

DEPRESSION

Older adults who are depressed often present with symptoms that look exactly like dementia. They may be forgetful, lack energy, not shower/change, stop doing basic responsibilities such as paying bills. Their concentration may be poor. And so on. Counseling and in some...

Hi there Careblazer, welcome back. There’s been a theme lately inside my care course that we’ve been spending some time talking about during our live Q&A sessions and I want to talk about it here as well since I’m guessing many of you can relate.

It’s about guilt...specifically guilt about putting a loved in a nursing home while you get to enjoy life. One of the course members talked about not being able to enjoy herself when she would go out to eat or to the movies because she feels such guilt for her husband who is in a nursing home. So I want to talk about this idea of guilt and difficulty enjoying yourself as a result of that guilt.

If you would rather watch my video on this topic, click here. 

Here’s the way I want you to think about this.

You already know from watching my past videos, reading past blogs, or from downloading the Careblazer Survival Guide that situations don’t create your feelings. So the fact that your LOWD...